Opposition mounts to unsafe opening of schools in Spain Opposition is mounting to the continued opening of unsafe schools in Spain. There are growing calls by educators and parents to close schools, and strikes have broken out among students as infection rates in education centres soar. Coronavirus cases in schools have rapidly increased since children returned to classrooms after the holidays, with the number of outbreaks in education centres more than quadrupling in only two weeks. In the week ending January 22, the Ministry of Health reported 95 new outbreaks in a seven-day period; by February 5, this had risen to 413 individual outbreaks in schools in a single week, the highest figure since the government began recording this data. An “outbreak” is defined as a cluster of three or more linked cases in a single area.