Successful vaccination campaign in Israel allows Jewish families to dine together again for Passover

Jewish families were able to gather today in Israel around the table of the “seder”, the ritual dinner that begins on Pesach (Passover) which could not be celebrated last year due to a curfew which limited the envisaged festival of freedom.

Unrestricted this year following the successful vaccination campaign, today’s ceremonial dinner opens a festive week in Israel, commemorating the exodus from Egypt when the Jewish people escaped slavery.

“And of course I feel a lot more comfortable meeting my grandparents when they’re all vaccinated and not having to worry about the virus,” 23-year-old Israeli Yuval Ungar told Efe before. to move into the family home.

Ritual hand washing, drinking four glasses of wine, and reading the Haggadah, a book that compiles the biblical account of the exodus of the Jews, are part of today’s traditional dinner.

This holiday is characterized by the fact that a large part of the population does not consume products made from sourdough flour, including beer and bread. Instead, they eat the “matza”, unleavened bread that commemorates the precipitous departure of the Jews from Pharaonic Egypt, after more than 200 slaves, so they did not have time to bake their bread. Families, especially religious, clean the houses carefully before Passover to leave them without a grain of yeast and a good part of the local businesses are also emptying of sourdough products.

Last year, curfews and the closure of cities to contain the coronavirus prevented families from reuniting. Today, with more than half of the population vaccinated with both doses and the pandemic under control, Israel began celebrating one of the most important holidays in Jewish tradition in the late afternoon.

Israel succeeds in celebrating the Passover as a family because more than half of its population (52.41%) is already vaccinated with the two doses against COVID-19, the disease that has already caused nearly 125 million infections and 2.7 million deaths worldwide, according to data from Johns Hopkins University & Medicine Coronavirus Research.

Israel, a country of 9.2 million inhabitants which has been carrying out the most intense vaccination campaign in the world since the end of December, has gradually emerged from its third confinement in early February.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu struck a deal with US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer that allowed Israel quickly obtain millions of doses of covid-19 vaccines in exchange for biomedical data on their effects.

Since then, the population’s pollution rate has steadily declined. Thursday, it was 1.1%, against 6% at the end of February, according to the Ministry of Health. Since the start of the pandemic, 6,157 Israelis have died out of a total of more than 830,000 infected with the coronavirus.

Oral vaccine

In addition to its successful traditional vaccination campaign, Israel is committed to continuing to drive advancements in the world of medicine. through a Phase 1 clinical trial for what could become the first oral COVID-19 vaccine.

Oramed Pharmaceuticals, a technology-based company developed by Hadassah-University Medical Center, recently announced a joint venture with Indian company Premas Biotech to develop a new oral vaccine against the coronavirus. Development is being carried out by Oravax Medical, and the oral vaccine has successfully produced antibodies in a preclinical study after a single dose.

The vaccine is based on Oramed’s POD oral delivery technology and Premas vaccine technology, the company recently announced.

Oramed technology can be used to orally deliver a number of protein therapies that would otherwise be given by injection.

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