Germany reported more than 1,000 COVID-19 deaths within 24 hours for the second consecutive day, bringing the death toll in the country to 37,607, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) announced on Thursday.

Thursday's RKI data showed that 1,070 people had succumbed to the disease in Germany within one day, compared to Wednesday's figure of 1,019 COVID-19 deaths. The highest daily death toll was 1,129 recorded on Dec. 30.

Thursday's figures also showed that another 26,391 people had tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, taking the total of confirmed coronavirus cases to more than 1.8 million.

The RKI said that there may have been delays in testing and reporting over the Christmas and New Year holidays.

On Tuesday, German federal and state governments had agreed to extend the measures against COVID-19 until the end of January, as well as to impose even stricter contact restrictions.

According to the German government, the three months ahead will still require considerable patience and discipline on everyone's part, because winter months favor the virus spread and the vaccination will only have a dampening effect when a larger part of the younger population has also been vaccinated.

Germany launched its vaccination campaign at the end of last month, with priority given to people aged over 80, people in elderly and care facilities, and frontline health care workers.

As the world is struggling to contain the pandemic, vaccination is underway in Germany and some other countries with the already authorized coronavirus vaccines.

Meanwhile, 235 candidate vaccines are still being developed worldwide -- 63 of them in clinical trials -- in countries including Germany, China, Russia, Britain and the United States, according to information released by the World Health Organization on Jan. 6.