More than 4 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in New York as hospitalizations have fallen to their lowest level since December, Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office on Friday said. 

In the last 24 hours, a record 179,038 doses have been administered in New York alone, Cuomo said.

"Nearly 180,000 vaccinations in a single day is a major milestone in our ongoing efforts to ensure eligible New Yorkers, especially those in communities that were hit the hardest by COVID, have direct access to the vaccine," Cuomo said. "However, we're still in a footrace to keep the infection rate down and drive vaccinations way up. While the infection rate is a function of our behavior, the rate of vaccination is tied directly to supply and right now demand for the vaccine is still far outpacing our supply."

Of the total vaccine doses, 2,674,839 first doses have been administered, Cuomo's office said.

The state in recent weeks has sought to ramp up distribution, with the opening of joint state and federal mass vaccination sites next week in Brooklyn, Queens, Albany, Rochester and Buffalo. 

Pop-up clinics have also opened in parts of New York to vaccinate New Yorkers. 

At the moment, about 10 million New York residents qualify for the vaccine, including people age 65 and older, people with qualifying underlying health conditions as well as essential workers and frontline pandemic workers. 

Hospitalizations due to COVID, meanwhile, have fallen to 5,626 patients, a decline of 529 people in the last week. That is the lowest hospitalization level since Dec. 12, Cuomo said. 

"New Yorkers' resilience and willingness to follow the rules got us through the Spring and the holiday surge, and it is getting us through the winter," Cuomo said. "We're vaccinating New Yorkers at a fast clip and expanding our network of distribution sites as fast as we can, but we're going to need more vaccines to address a large enough portion of the population to defeat this pandemic once and for all."