(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — Just Tuesday of last week, the U.S. marked 24 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and, on Sunday, the nation added another million cases.  As of Monday morning, the nation has reported over 25.1 million cases.

Also last week, the U.S. reported that the nation’s death toll topped 400,000 deaths from the virus. The death toll, according to Johns Hopkins University, is about to cross 420,000 in the U.S. and reports the virus killed over 2,129,000 people worldwide.

Global confirmed cases is nearing a grim milestone, with nearly 100 million cases reported.  Currently, 99,195,630 cases have been confirmed.

The race to vaccinate Americans rolls on, despite the news.  Over 20 million vaccine doses have been administered in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed Saturday.

President Joe Biden vowed to have 100 million doses administered in his first 100 days in office.  In order to achieve that goal, which Doctor Anthony Fauci says is reasonable, production of vaccines and the materials to administer them needs to ramp up.

While Dr. Fauci hopes that a sense of normalcy will return to the U.S. by the fall, where he hopes up to 80 percent of the nation will be inoculated, Vivek Murthy, President Biden’s nominee for U.S. surgeon general, calls it an “ambitious goal” to have herd immunity achieved by the summer.

“I think what — I think we can see improvement,” Murthy said on ABC’s This Week. “I think we can see reductions in cases and hospitalizations and deaths. I think we can see many more people immunized.”

Murthy agrees that, in order to achieve herd immunity and return to normal, the U.S. needs to vaccinate as many residents as possible and dispel misinformation circulating online about vaccines and the virus — as well as promote social distancing guidelines and mask wearing.

“The more people we vaccinate, the better we will do, the fewer outbreaks we will see, the sooner we can get back to our way of life,” he said.