BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Spain’s medical community has scored a victory after a court ordered that a regional government must compensate doctors with up to 49,000 euros ($56,000) for having to work without personal protection suits during the devastating early months of the pandemic.

The lawsuit brought by a doctor’s union is the first of its kind to be won in Spain, whose health care system was pushed to the brink when COVID-19 first struck.

“This ruling is groundbreaking in Spain,” doctor Víctor Pedrera, secretary general of the Doctors’ Union of Valencia CESM-CV that filed the suit, told The Associated Press by phone on Wednesday.

Pedrera, a family doctor, said that he got ill with the coronavirus shortly after it hit Spain in March 2020 and spent two months at home “quite badly off and with no idea of what was being done for treatment.”

The court based in the eastern province of Alicante ruled late on Tuesday that the region of Valencia failed to protect the health of its doctors during the first three months of the pandemic.

The judge said that the lack of personal protection suits created “a serious safety and health danger for all health workers, especially for doctors due to their direct exposure to the risk of contagion.”

The judge ordered compensation from between 5,000-49,000 euros to be paid to the 153 doctors who formed part of the suit.

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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — A couple accused of refusing to fill out the required COVID-19 entry form at Puerto Rico's airport and providing proof of a negative test for the coronavirus were detained after they locked themselves in their minivan for several hours, prompting police to send a negotiator, officials said Wednesday.

The couple detained late Tuesday were accused of obstructing a public official and could face a hefty fine or up to six months in prison.

They arrived in Puerto Rico Jan. 2 and had been ordered to appear in court on Tuesday. When they didn't show up, authorities searched for them and found them inside a minivan in the northern city of Caguas.

A small number of protesters showed up to support the couple and threatened several journalists, who then left.

The island of 3.3 million people has reported more than 221,600 confirmed infections and more than 3,300 deaths. Given a recent spike in COVID-19 cases, Gov. Pedro Pierluisi has implemented more restrictions, including requiring all those traveling to Puerto Rico to present a negative test upon arrival regardless of their vaccination status.

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ROME (AP) — Police in Italy have arrested a nurse on charges that he faked giving coronavirus vaccinations to at least 45 people so they could get a health pass fraudulently, ditching vaccines in a bin and even putting bandages on his “patients" so no one would suspect the scam.

Police in Ancona, on Italy’s eastern coast, also placed four alleged accomplices under house arrest, accusing them of finding anti-vaccine customers who were willing to pay for a health pass rather than get the shots. Forty-five people who allegedly received the passes as part of the scam are under investigation, required to check in daily with police and prevented from leaving their cities, a police statement said.

Police filmed the nurse at work in the huge vaccine hub of Ancona, apparently squirting the needle’s contents into the medical waste bin before pretending to inject the patient’s arm, and then putting a bandaid on.

The suspects are accused of corruption, falsifying information and embezzlement, though police added that the fake vaccination scheme also wasted a “fundamental public resource.”

Italy has cracked down increasingly hard on the unvaccinated, requiring proof of vaccination or a recent recovery from COVID-19 to access a host of leisure activities as well as services such as public transport. Italy, where the outbreak first erupted in Europe in February 2020, has inoculated 86% of its over-12 population and has administered boosters to about 60% of those eligible.

There have been several cases of police investigations into fake health passes, and one headline-grabbing case of a dentist who went into get his jab with a silicone fake arm. After his stunt landed him under criminal investigation, the dentist announced he had gotten vaccinated and said he was merely protesting the government's vaccine mandates for health care workers.

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TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Tuesday tried to calm Israelis anxious about the rapid spread of the omicron variant, insisting the government is managing the crisis better than most and ruling out a national shutdown.

Bennett said during an evening press conference that Israel was weathering an “unstoppable storm” of infection by protecting the most vulnerable people and keeping the economy open. He also called on people to take personal responsibility for protecting themselves, their children and older relatives.

More than 400,000 vulnerable Israelis — mostly people over 60 — have gotten a fourth coronavirus vaccination and hospitals are prepared for an influx of severe illness. Bennett argued that these steps are evidence the situation is under control.

“There’s no place for panic. There’s no place for hysteria. We will get through this together,” Bennett said, adding that the government is handling a once-in-a-lifetime crisis "in the right and responsible way."

He spoke after a poll for Israel’s Channel 12 showed nearly two-thirds of Israelis viewed the government’s handling of the crisis poorly.

Bennett has warned that between 2 million and 4 million people among Israel’s population of 9.4 million people are expected to be infected by the variant.

On Tuesday, he said the government's focus is on keeping seniors safe through vaccines and reserving newly developed drugs for them.

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LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Bolivia's vice president and six cabinet ministers have tested positive for the coronavirus and are in isolation, the government said Tuesday.

The infection for Vice President David Choquehuanca came a week after he had received his first dose of an anti-COVID-19 vaccine. He had been widely criticized for waiting so long to get a shot.

The Ministry of the President said others testing positive were ministers of the interior, Eduardo del Castillo; defense, Edmundo Novillo; foreign relations, Rogelio Mayta; education, Edgar Pari; justice, Iván Lima, and planning, Gabriela Mendoza.

As in much of Latin America, confirmed COVID-19 cases have been rising sharply in Bolivia. Officials reported 3,550 new cases on Jan. 1 and 11,190 a week later.

That has prompted officials to cancel mass gatherings in the country of 11.6 million people.

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SYDNEY (AP) — Australia’s most populous state, New South Wales, made the reporting of rapid antigen test results mandatory Wednesday as it experienced its deadliest day of the pandemic with 21 deaths.

State Premier Dominic Perrottet said residents who failed to register a positive rapid antigen test would face a fine of up to 1,000 Australian dollars (US$721) starting next week.

Perrottet said the registration process was simple and would help health officials provide more support to people with underlying health conditions.

The 21 deaths reported in New South Wales on Wednesday topped the previous record of 18 set on Monday. The state saw 34,759 new COVID-19 cases and 2,242 hospitalizations, including 175 patients in intensive care.

Victoria state, whose capital Melbourne is hosting the Australian Open starting next week, also reported 21 deaths Wednesday along with 40,127 new cases as the state government announced that 1,000 first-year healthcare students and retired nurses would be recruited as vaccinators to meet rising demand for booster shots.

Deputy Premier James Merlino said the state’s healthcare system is strained, with around 6,600 workers off duty after testing positive or coming into close contact with a positive case.

New pandemic orders coming into force in Victoria on Wednesday make booster shots mandatory for critical workers in various fields including health care, disability care, aged care, emergency services, correctional facilities, hotel quarantine and food distribution.

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MOSCOW (AP) — Russian officials on Tuesday sounded the alarm about a looming surge of coronavirus infections due to the highly contagious omicron variant, but stopped short of announcing new restrictions in a hard-hit country where very few limits are in place.

Russia already has by far Europe's highest pandemic toll at over 317,000 dead. The warning on Tuesday comes just weeks after new infections and deaths in Russia began to decline following another record-breaking surge.

Pessimistic estimates suggest that Russia might face six-figure numbers of daily new infections, according to Anna Popova, head of Russia's public health agency Rospotrebnadzor.

Experts already see indications that the situation with the virus is worsening, Popova added — infection rates in 35 out of more than 80 Russian regions are higher than the country's average.

Russia this year has been reporting between 15,000 and 18,000 new infections a day, compared to December's rate of about 30,000 daily cases. The country's state coronavirus task force has registered over 10.6 million confirmed infections and 317,618 deaths overall.

Russia's state statistics agency, which user broader counting criteria, puts the death toll much higher, saying the overall number of virus-linked deaths between April 2020 and October 2021 was over 625,000.