narvikk/iStockBy MORGAN WINSOR, ERIN SCHUMAKER, IVAN PEREIRA and EMILY SHAPIRO, ABC News

(NEW YORK) — A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now infected more than 103.9 million people worldwide and killed over 2.25 million of them, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

Here’s how the news is developing Wednesday. All times Eastern:

Feb 03, 9:38 am
Fauci says ‘absolutely not’ to Super Bowl parties

Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser on COVID-19 to U.S. President Joe Biden, said people should “absolutely not” host or attend any Super Bowl parties this weekend.

“Watch the Super Bowl on TV, enjoy it, have a party in your house with your family with the people who are there,” Fauci told ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos in an interview Wednesday on Good Morning America.

“You don’t want parties with people that you haven’t had that much contact with, you just don’t know if they’re infected,” he added. “So as difficult as that is, at least this time around, just lay low and cool it.”

Fauci, who is also the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, noted that the country is still seeing a “considerable number of cases” each day and there’s cause for concern over the new, more contagious variants of the novel coronavirus that were recently detected on U.S. soil.

When asked whether he thinks the Super Bowl could become a superspreader event, Fauci said he hopes not.

“I believe that they are trying to keep people separated enough in the stands wearing masks so they don’t have that proximity,” he added. “If you’re outdoors and you’re several feet apart — 6, 7, 8, 10 feet — you could be OK, as long as people abide by that and don’t slip.”

Feb 03, 8:08 am
US reports over 114,000 new cases

There were 114,437 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in the United States on Tuesday, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

Tuesday’s case count is far less than the country’s all-time high of 300,282 newly confirmed infections on Jan. 2, Johns Hopkins data shows.

An additional 3,532 fatalities from COVID-19 were registered nationwide on Tuesday, down from a peak of 4,466 new deaths on Jan. 12, according to Johns Hopkins data.

COVID-19 data may be skewed due to possible lags in reporting over the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend last month.

A total of 26,435,563 people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 446,901 have died, according to Johns Hopkins data. The cases include people from all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., and other U.S. territories as well as repatriated citizens.

Much of the country was under lockdown by the end of March as the first wave of the pandemic hit. By May 20, all U.S. states had begun lifting stay-at-home orders and other restrictions put in place to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. The day-to-day increase in the country’s cases then hovered around 20,000 for a couple of weeks before shooting back up over the summer.

The numbers lingered around 40,000 to 50,000 from mid-August through early October before surging again to record levels, crossing 100,000 for the first time on Nov. 4, then reaching 200,000 on Nov. 27 before topping 300,000 on Jan. 2.

So far, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized two COVID-19 vaccines for emergency use — one developed by U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, and another developed by American biotechnology company Moderna and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. More than 32 million vaccine doses have been administered nationwide, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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