For the third time in eight days, the United States has set a new record for coronavirus deaths in a day.

The country saw 3,775 people succumb to COVID-19 on Tuesday, according to data complied by Johns Hopkins University. On Dec. 29 and 30, the U.S. also registered more than 3,700 deaths.

Meanwhile, the country has surpassed 21 million cases during the pandemic — 21,055,486 as of Wednesday morning, to be exact. More than 357,000 Americans have died from the virus. 

The U.S. recorded 230,216 new cases Tuesday and hospitalizations hit a record high of 131,195, signs that the death toll is unlikely to slow down anytime soon.

There are also concerns about a new coronavirus variant, first identified in the United Kingdom, that is more easily transmissible. A small number of cases of the variant have been found in the U.S. 

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Newsweek on Tuesday that he suspects the variant is "more widespread in the United States than we are currently detecting it to be."

Two vaccines are being distributed in the U.S. — one developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, the other by Moderna — but the pace of inoculations is falling far short of what government officials had promised, which was 20 million by the end of 2020. As of Wednesday, 17 million doses had been distributed to states but only 4.8 million people had been vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.