This is our daily update of breaking COVID-19 news for Sunday, January 3rd, 2021. Previous daily updates can be found here, and up-to-date statistics are here.

New York City is in Phase 4 of reopening now, which includes zoos, botanical gardens, museums, and gyms. Citing rising hospitalization rates, Governor Andrew Cuomo suspended indoor dining in NYC starting Monday, December 14th. After being shut down for several weeks, NYC public schools partially reopened on December 7th for 3K-5th grade students, with students with special needs returning on December 10th. Certain parts of Staten Island remain under a zoned shutdown.

Get answers to questions you may have with our "Ask An Epidemiologist" series, or learn more about NYC COVID-19 testing options with our explainer. Here are some local and state hotlines for more information: NYC: 311; NY State Hotline: 888-364-3065; NJ State Hotline: 800-222-1222.

Here's the latest:

12:12 p.m.: Governor Andrew Cuomo says he wants to take the COVID-19 vaccine, and he’d feel a lot safer if he did. But he's decided to wait until it is equitably available to communities of color in a later phase.

The message was delivered to the congregation of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem on Sunday morning, where the governor urged parishioners to get the vaccine once it’s available to their group and recommitted to an equitable roll out.

“Race or income will not determine who lives and who dies,” the governor said in pre-recorded remarks during a livestream service. “I will not take the vaccine until the vaccine is available for my group in Black, Hispanic, and poor communities around the state.”

Racial disparities during the pandemic have been stark. Black people have died from the virus at twice the rate of white people in the country, while Hispanic people died at 1.5 times the rate, the governor said. Testing was more available in wealthier and white areas of the state, too, he said.

“COVID showed that racism is a public health crisis also,” he said. “In New York, we’re committed to making the vaccine available for everyone, everywhere.”

With the administration of the vaccine, the governor and Mayor Bill de Blasio are trying to ensure the vast disparities don’t continue, particularly among Black communities. But they are up against centuries of systemic racism and both historical and present day medical abuses that have broken the trust of Black Americans. Cuomo cited the Tuskegee trials in which treatment was withheld from Black men with syphilis in a horrific experiment, saying: "Now, I understand the cynicism and skepticism; it is not without cause. The Tuskegee Experiment is a terrible stain on the soul of this nation. The system does have biases and injustices."

Meanwhile, the vaccine administration has also been slow to start in NY and across the country.

The governor’s office told the NY Post that about 274,000 doses have been administered, which is about 1,408 vaccinations per 100,000 people as of Saturday afternoon. That is higher than other large states including Florida, Texas, and California, according to the CDC’s vaccine tracker. But, the CDC information was last updated Saturday morning. The Governor’s Office did not immediately provide updated vaccination information on Sunday morning for New York State.

In NYC, 104,910 people have gotten the first dose of the two-shot vaccine out of 391,400 doses delivered as of city data released Sunday. A total of 563,425 doses have been allocated for the five boroughs.

De Blasio has promised to administer 1 million doses by the end of the month under an ambitious plan to double vaccine administration capacity in just weeks.

The COVID testing positivity level across the state rose again to 7.98%, the governor's office announced on Sunday. Hospitalizations rose by 149 to 7,963 people. The number of ICU patients rose by 23 to 1,344 and those intubated rose by 29 to 815. Another 183 people died from the virus statewide on Saturday.

Dr. Anthony Fauci during an interview on ABC on Sunday morning.

ABC / This Week

Dr. Fauci Explains COVID Deaths "Are Real," Contradicting Trump

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, rebuked President Donald Trump on Sunday after being asked about Trump's assertion that the number of COVID-19 cases in the United States is "far exaggerated."

During his appearance on ABC's "This Week," Fauci dismissed Trump's false claim, telling co-anchor Martha Raddatz, "The deaths are real deaths. All you need to do is go out into the trenches. Go to the hospitals and see what the health care workers are dealing with. They are under very stressful situations in many areas of the country. The hospital beds are stretched, people are running out of beds, running out of trained personnel who are exhausted. That's real. That's not fake. That's real."

Fauci has often avoided directly criticizing Trump, who has threatened to fire Fauci multiple times throughout the crisis. Although Fauci did not mention Trump by name, the president appeared to feel slighted, posting another tweet after the interview, complaining that he doesn't get enough credit for fighting a pandemic that has now killed over 350,000 people in the United States.

The U.S. suffered the most deaths from COVID-19 in the world by far. The nation with the next highest death toll is Brazil, which has reported more than 195,000 deaths. COVID-19 cases continue to rise in many states, including North Carolina and Arizona, and health experts fear a post-holiday surge will only make matters worse.

Fauci said he never expected the COVID death toll in the U.S. reach such devastating heights. "To have 300,000 cases in a given day, and between two and 3,000 deaths a day is just terrible," Fauci said. "There's no running away from the numbers, Martha. It's something that we absolutely got to grasp and get our arms around and turn that inflection down by very intensive adherence to the public health measures, uniformly, throughout the country, with no exception."

Fauci expressed hope that President-elect Joe Biden would be able to accelerate the administration of COVID-19 vaccinations. Biden has lamented the slow rollout of the vaccine and set a goal of getting 100 million people their first shot of the two-dose vaccine within his first 100 days in office. At its current pace, "it's going to take years—not months—to vaccinate the American people," Biden said on Tuesday.

"The goal of vaccinating 100 million people in the first 100 days is a realistic goal," Fauci said on Sunday. "We can do 1 million people per day. You know we’ve done massive vaccination programs, Martha, in our history. There’s no reason why we can’t do it right now."

In New York State, the number of total COVID-19 cases passed 1 million on Saturday, Bloomberg News and NBC report. Texas and Florida have also passed the 1 million cases mark, while California has counted over 2.2 million cases since COVID-19 began spreading in America.