Karl Lauterbach chose a sporty term to describe the annual race against the virus, which has meanwhile mutated into a marathon.
"Now is the starting signal: Corona is back." Unlike his hapless CDU predecessor Jens Spahn, the SPD Health Minister wants to intercept the third corona autumn and winter wave before the finish line.
The fact that Lauterbach has now also given the go-ahead for a vaccine advertising campaign that has been missing so far is a step that is overdue.
Starting a campaign for a second booster shot with the vaccines adapted for omicron subvariants after the wave has already built up is not really the "timing" Lauterbach touted.
Even when the first generation of life-saving vaccines was ready at the end of 2020, there was no convincing communication campaign that could have promoted the highest possible vaccination rate without a moralizing undertone, but with a lot of education and information.
It remains to be seen whether it will be possible to achieve this goal with 84 personal confessions of "real" people, as Lauterbach emphasized.
One of the main reasons to be vaccinated again now is to protect yourself from a long-Covid disease that has already affected many people, including young people.
So far, there has been far too little support and help from politicians and health insurance companies for them.
Lauterbach's appeal to the federal states to exhaust the means available to them to make masks compulsory indoors seems pleading.
In any case, in Bavaria, the former “Caution Team” around Markus Söder is silent.
There, among other things, the Oktoberfest, which was attended by millions, delivered the expected result without masks, testing and distance.
Not only in Munich are the clinics taking in many new Covid patients again, the staff is at the limit due to high sick leave.
And winter is just coming.