Hear David Hasselhoff’s Covid-19 vaccine message

By Jack Guy, CNN

David Hasselhoff is calling on Germans to get a Covid-19 vaccination in videos released on Twitter by the country’s health ministry.

Speaking to the camera in front of palm trees and a blue sky, the “Baywatch” and “Knight Rider” star says getting a jab is the best way for people to regain their freedom. At one point he lifts his sleeve to reveal a small plaster on his upper arm.

“What I’m looking for is to get life back to normal, is the freedom, the freedom to get vaccinated and to go around the world. The most important experience of the pandemic for me is death,” he says.

“It causes death. Get vaccinated. The advice I can give to everyone in America, and to the world, and to Germany is get vaccinated.”

Hasselhoff is a well-known figure in Germany, famously appearing suspended above the Berlin Wall on New Year’s Eve 1989, singing his song “Looking for Freedom.”

The wall, which had divided Berlin for decades, had fallen six weeks earlier.

However, the latest videos have been mocked and criticized in Germany, with people pointing out that vaccines aren’t available to large parts of the population due to supply issues.

As of Monday, anyone aged 12 or over is eligible to apply for an appointment to get a Covid-19 vaccine, according to the health ministry.

The same day, health minister Jens Spahn tweeted that 55 million doses had been administered so far.

In January, Hasselhoff auctioned off his personal K.I.T.T. car, a Pontiac Firebird Trans Am styled after the iconic car used in his 1980s television series “Knight Rider,” alongside a raft of other memorabilia.

CNN’s Nina Avramova and Colin Ivory Meyer contributed to this report.