A worker sprays sanitizer on the shoes of students wearing face masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus as they arrive at their school in Lahore, Pakistan. Pakistani authorities started to reopen schools in phases despite a steady increase in deaths and infections from the coronavirus, official said. (AP Photo/K.M.Chaudary)

Here are summaries of the latest Associated Press coronavirus pandemic stories worldwide, including:

• Israel sends first vaccine batch to Palestinians;

• Italy slowly reopens after pre-holiday closures;

• France’s Macron asks EU to help nearby areas get vaccines;

• AstraZeneca to send European Union 9 million more doses this quarter;

• Germany breaks up illegal Carnival procession in high-virus region;

• European crime gangs dealing in fake COVID-19 test certificates for travel;

• Israeli Cabinet votes to extend national lockdown for at least five more days.

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ROME — Much of Italy is gingerly reopening from pre-Christmas coronavirus closures, with the Vatican Museums welcoming a trickle of visitors to the Sistine Chapel and locals ordering their cappuccinos at outdoor tables.

While many European countries remain in hard lockdowns amid surging COVID-19 infections and variants, most Italian regions graduated to the coveted “yellow” category of risk starting Monday. That has allowed museums to reopen, sit-down restaurant and bar service to resume and many high-schoolers to return to class.

In Rome, that meant that the Vatican Museums reopened for the first time in 88 days — it’s longest closure ever. Museum director Barbara Jatta said staff took advantage of the weekslong closure to rearrange some exhibit halls and do maintenance work that would otherwise be difficult to complete with the nearly 7 million visitors who normally flock to see Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment” and Raffael masterpieces each year.

Italy, the onetime European epicenter of the outbreak, is averaging around 12,000-15,000 new confirmed cases and 300-600 COVID-19 deaths each day. But it appears to have avoided the severe post-Christmas surges in Britain and elsewhere thanks to tightened restrictions on travel and socializing over the holiday.

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LISBON, Portugal — A sharp coronavirus surge in Portugal in January is showing signs of slowing down but the high number of hospitalizations continue to strain a health system already operating beyond capacity.

Portuguese authorities reported Monday 5,805 new cases –an improvement from the record figures of over 16,000 just over a week ago– and 275 more deaths for COVID-19. That brought the pandemic’s total tallies to 726,000 confirmed infections and more than 12,700 fatalities.

The southern European country continues to top the global charts with the worst 7-day rolling average of new daily infections and fatalities per 100,000 residents, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Nearly 6,900 people are hospitalized with COVID-19, 865 of them in intensive care wards according to health authorities.

Spanish public broadcaster TVE showed Monday long lines of trucks and other vehicles spanning several kilometers (miles) as authorities enforced a two-week ban on all non-essential travel across the shared land border.

Portugal has also been in a strict lockdown for more than a week.

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SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Bosnian Serb health authorities say that 2,000 Russian Sputnik V vaccines have arrived in the pro-Russian, Serb-dominated half of the country, in what is the first shipment of any vaccines to the Balkan nation.

Alen Seranic, the Health Minister of Republika Srpska, which is how the Serb-run Bosnian entity is called, says the vaccines have landed in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo for approval by the country’s medical agency.

Bosnia’s Serbs have close political ties with Russia. The second entity, run by the country’s predominantly Muslim Bosniaks and Croats, has announced first shipments of Western-made vaccines later this month.

The country remains ethnically divided years after the 1992-95 war. A U.S.-brokered peace deal created the two entities connected loosely in a joint central government.

Seranic says health staff working with COVID-19 patients will be the first in line for vaccination. He says additional 400,000 Russian vaccines should arrive in the next two months.

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PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron urged the EU to better help its European neighbors in the race to get COVID-19 vaccines, ahead of a meeting in Paris with Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic.

Macron, speaking from the Elysee presidential palace, acknowledged France and Europe “could have been more present” by Serbia’s side, in an apparent response to earlier criticism from Vucic, who said last week he had been counting on a lot more support from the EU.

Serbia, which sits at the heart of the Balkans region, received doses of China’s Sinopharm that enable the country to launch its vaccination campaign earlier this month.

Macron called on the EU to be “even more efficient” and “keep accelerating things” in the coming months to provide vaccines to the population in the bloc but also to better help its neighbors.

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BERLIN — German police have broken up an illegal Carnival procession in a region that currently has the country’s highest coronavirus infection rate.

Up to 90 people participated in the procession Sunday in the village of Juechsen, complete with horses, news agency dpa reported. Police said today that participants had organized the event via social media.

The Schmalkalden-Meiningen county in eastern Germany, where Juechsen is located, currently has an infection rate of some 326 new cases per 100,000 residents over seven days — Germany’s highest. The national average today was 91.

Local council leader Peggy Greiser said that the event in Juechsen “is absolutely irresponsible and intolerable in view of the current serious situation.”

Germany is currently in a nationwide lockdown, its second. Its many better-known Carnival processions have been canceled.

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THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The European Union’s police agency is warning nations to be on the lookout for fake COVID-19 test certificates, as crime gangs attempt to cash in on pandemic travel restrictions.

Many countries have introduced requirements for arriving passengers to show a negative COVID-19 test to slow the spread of the coronavirus brought in by people arriving from other nations.

Europol said today that recent cases reported by EU member states include a forgery ring selling negative test results to passengers at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris and a counterfeiter detained by Spanish police for selling fake test results.

British authorities also caught fraudsters selling COVID-19 documents for 100 pounds ($137) each.

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RAMALLAH, West Bank — The World Health Organization says the Palestinian Authority will begin receiving tens of thousands of coronavirus vaccines later this month pending agreements with manufacturers and regulatory approval.

The announcement today came a day after Israel said it had agreed to transfer 5,000 doses of the coronavirus vaccine to the Palestinians to immunize front-line medical workers. Israel is leading one of the world’s most successful vaccination campaigns after securing millions of doses from major drug makers Pfizer and Moderna.

Rights groups say Israel is responsible as an occupying power to provide vaccines to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel denies it has such an obligation and says it is prioritizing its own citizens. The Palestinians have not publicly requested vaccines from Israel and say they are seeking their own supplies elsewhere.

The WHO said today that the PA would receive 37,440 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine from mid-February “subject to approvals of supply agreements with manufacturers.” Those would go to frontline medical workers. It says the PA would receive another 240,000 to 405,600 AstraZeneca vaccine doses from mid- to late February subject to WHO emergency use approval.

The vaccines are being provided through COVAX, a WHO program to help poor countries acquire vaccines.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh told a Cabinet meeting today that vaccinations would begin later this month with the arrival of 50,000 doses, mostly purchased through COVAX.

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JOHANNESBURG — South Africa has acquired 20 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine that are expected to arrive in the second quarter of the year, the government has confirmed.

The purchase is a significant boost to the government’s efforts to acquire vaccines to reach its goal of inoculating 40 million people, representing 67 percent of the country’s population, this year.

The cost of the Pfizer vaccines will be announced at a later date by Minister of Health Zweli Mkhize, said Lwazi Manzi, spokeswoman for the health ministry.

South Africa is eagerly awaiting the arrival today of its first delivery of vaccines, 1 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from the Serum Institute of India. That will be followed up by another 500,000 doses later this month. Those AstraZeneca vaccines will be used to inoculate frontline health workers.

In the coming months, South Africa is expecting to receive 6 million vaccine doses from the international COVAX facility, 9 million of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine when it is approved, and an additional 20 million from the African Union’s vaccine acquisition task team.

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BERLIN — Germany’s health minister wants to press ahead with securing coronavirus vaccine supplies for 2022, preferably at the European Union level but if necessary nationally.

Jens Spahn said today that it’s important to secure production capacity in Germany and Europe in advance. He said it’s not yet clear whether or when booster vaccinations will be required, or whether vaccines will need to be adapted to new virus mutations.

He spoke at a videoconference in which German-based pharmaceutical giant Bayer, which last month announced it was linking up with German company CureVac to help develop and distribute that firm’s prospective COVID-19 vaccine, said it will help produce the vaccine.

CureVac’s vaccine contender is in advanced stages of development.

The German government faces criticism for the sluggish start to the country’s vaccination campaign. The European Union, which has ordered vaccines for the entire 27-nation bloc, its also facing criticism.

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TOKYO — A Japanese vice education minister has been dismissed from his Cabinet post over his recent visit at an expensive Tokyo hostess club, defying an ongoing coronavirus state of emergency.

Taido Tanose told reporters today that Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga reprimanded and dismissed him as vice education minister over the hostess bar visit. He then submitted his resignation from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, along with two other senior LDP lawmakers who were clubbing with him.

Earlier today, another senior lawmaker, Kiyohiko Toyama, announced his resignation as legislator to take responsibility for a separate Tokyo hostess club visit last month. He belongs to Komeito, a junior partner of Suga’s ruling coalition.

The four lawmakers defied an ongoing coronavirus state of emergency request for the people to restrain nightlife and bar visits, and for restaurants to close early.

Suga on Jan. 7 placed the Tokyo region — and added seven other urban prefectures a week later — under a state of emergency through Feb. 7. Japan has seen about 5,700 virus deaths.

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BERLIN — The European Union says vaccine maker AstraZeneca has agreed to supply 9 million additional doses to the 27-nation bloc during the first quarter.

The new target of 40 million doses by the end of March is still only half what the company had originally aimed for, triggering a spat between AstraZeneca and the EU last week.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said late Sunday that the British-Swedish pharmaceutical maker will also begin deliveries one week sooner than scheduled and expand its manufacturing capacity in Europe.

The EU is far behind Britain and the United States in getting its population of 450 million vaccinated against the virus. The slow rollout has been blamed on a range of national problems as well as slower authorization of the vaccines and an initial shortage of supply.

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CANBERRA, Australia — Australia’s prime minister says he expects all Australians will have been offered a free COVID-19 vaccine by October, but has no timeline yet for sharing vaccines with Southeast Asian and South Pacific island neighbors.

Australia last month approved the Pfizer vaccine and expects to start vaccinating in late February.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison told the National Press Club of Australia that his government has secured 140 million vaccine doses, enough to cover its population of 26 million “several times over.”

He said Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Minister for International Development and the Pacific Zed Seselja were working with the leaders of Australia’s developing neighbors to share vaccines.

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ISLAMABAD — A top Pakistani health official says half a million doses of Chinese Sinopharm vaccine have arrived from Beijing in a special plane.

Today’s announcement by Faisal Sultan, who advises Prime Minister Imran Khan on health issues, comes days after the government said it will receive 17 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine under the WHO’s COVAX Facility.

Pakistan hopes up to 7 million doses of coronavirus vaccines under the WHO’s COVAX Facility would arrive by March.

Sultan’s comments came hours after a special plane loaded with 500,000 doses of Sinopharm’s vaccine landed at the Islamabad airport.

Sultan in a tweet today paid tribute to frontline health workers over the response to coronavirus, saying they would be the first to get vaccinated. Pakistan plans to start vaccinations this week.

Today, Pakistan reported 26 additional deaths amid 1,615 new cases. It has seen over 11,000 deaths since February 2020.

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PERTH, Australia — The city of Perth has been locked down for five days after Western Australia state’s first case of local COVID-19 infection in almost 10 months.

The city of 2 million people and coastal towns to the south were locked down from Sunday night until Friday night.

This followed a security guard who worked at a Perth quarantine hotel contracting a highly contagious British variant of the virus. Overseas travelers who arrive in Perth must isolate in hotel quarantine for 14 days.

The last previous known case of someone being infected with COVID-19 within Western Australia was on April 11.

Western Australia, Australia’s largest state by area, has remained virus-free for months by enforcing the nation’s toughest border restrictions in an elimination strategy. Those within the state have enjoyed some of Australia’s least restrictive pandemic measures.

Schools which were due to resume today will remain closed for another week.

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JERUSALEM — The Israeli Cabinet has voted to extend a nationwide lockdown for at least five more days as it struggles to bring a raging coronavirus outbreak under control.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced early today that the restrictions, which have forced nonessential businesses and most schools to remain closed for the past month, will remain in effect until at least Friday. A ban on nearly all incoming and outgoing flights will remain in effect for another week.

The Cabinet is to meet on Wednesday to decide whether to extend the restrictions even longer.

Israel has launched one of the world’s most aggressive vaccination campaigns, inoculating more than one-third of its population in just one month.

But the vaccine has had little effect so far in controlling the outbreak, which has spread quickly with the arrival of foreign variants of the coronavirus and continued violations of lockdown restrictions. Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Israelis thronged a pair of funerals Sunday, defying a ban on large public gatherings.

Israel, a country of 9.3 million people, has been reporting an average of some 6,000 new cases of the coronavirus each day. Nearly 4,800 people have died.