The Spanish government has won a key parliamentary vote in order to extend the State of Alarm for a fifth time in the country until June 7 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Wednesday, the government carried the motion with 177 votes in favour, 162 votes against and 11 abstentions, according to the media report.

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The fifth extension of the State of Alarm, which was first introduced on March 15, was approved with the votes of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist Party (PSOE), its coalition partners, Unidas Podemos, the center-right Ciudadanos, the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), Mas Pais and some regionalist parties.

The right-wing People’s Party voted against extending the State of Alarm, along with the Vox party and the Catalan parties Junts per Cat, CUP and Ezquerra Republicana in the tight vote.

Sanchez stressed the importance of maintaining the constitutional apparatus which allows the government to control the free movement of people as the country continues to relax restrictions imposed to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Sanchez noted that the measure was “the only possible way to combat the virus efficiently,” and promised it would “not last one day longer than necessary. Nobody has the right to throw away what we have all achieved together”, he added.

Wednesday saw the number of new deaths of COVID-19 in Spain increase by 95, to a total of 27,888, while the cases stood at 232,555.

A State of Alarm is the first of three emergency levels a Spanish government can apply under exceptional circumstances, with the others being ‘State of Exception’ and ‘Martial Law’.

Earlier, the Prime Minister received parliamentary support for two-week extensions to the state of emergency that took effect on March 14 and expires May 24.

The government has nonetheless indicated that some economic sectors might not rebound before the end of the year, with tourism the main question mark at the moment.

In April, almost 900,000 Spanish workers have lost their jobs since the country went into lockdown in response to the coronavirus pandemic, social security data published.

Meanwhile, the number of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases crossed the 5-million mark on Wednesday, according to a compilation of figures by Worldometer, as the pandemic continued to devastate the globe where close to 325,000 people have now died due to it and millions more find themselves unemployed and at the risk of poverty.