{"id":239834,"date":"2026-01-11T18:18:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-11T18:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/239834\/"},"modified":"2026-01-11T18:18:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T18:18:07","slug":"germany-rejects-rfk-jr-claims-about-covid-vaccine-exemption-prosecutions-robert-f-kennedy-jr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/239834\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany rejects RFK Jr claims about Covid vaccine exemption prosecutions | Robert F Kennedy Jr"},"content":{"rendered":"

The German government has sharply rejected claims by the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr<\/a>, that doctors in Germany have faced legal action for issuing vaccine and mask exemptions during the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe statements made by the US secretary of health are completely unfounded, factually incorrect, and must be rejected,\u201d Germany\u2019s health minister, Nina Warken, said in a strongly worded statement released late on Saturday.<\/p>\n

In a video posted on X, Kennedy, a longtime vaccine sceptic, said he had written a letter to Warken calling for an \u201cend to politically motivated prosecutions\u201d. He provided no sources for his claims and misspelled Warken\u2019s name as \u201cWorkin\u201d.<\/p>\n

Kennedy alleged the government was \u201climiting people\u2019s abilities to act on their own convictions when they face medical decisions\u201d, accusing it of \u201cviolating the sacred patient-physician relationship\u201d and of making doctors \u201cenforcers of state policies\u201d.<\/p>\n

The US health secretary said: \u201cI\u2019ve learned that more than a thousand German physicians and thousands of their patients now face prosecution and punishment for issuing exemptions from wearing masks or getting Covid-19 vaccines.\u201d<\/p>\n

He did not provide specific examples or say which reports he was referring to, but added: \u201cIn my letter, I explained that Germany is targeting physicians who put their patients first and punishing citizens for making their own medical choices.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said that \u201cno democracy grounded in confidence and transparency should move in that direction\u201d but that Germany had \u201cthe opportunity and the responsibility to correct this trajectory [and] to restore medical autonomy\u201d.<\/p>\n

Warken rejected Kennedy\u2019s claims, saying that during the pandemic there was \u201cnever any obligation on the medical profession to administer Covid-19 vaccinations\u201d. She said criminal prosecution was only pursued in cases of fraud and document forgery.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnyone who did not want to offer vaccinations for medical, ethical, or personal reasons was not liable to prosecution [or] sanctions,\u201d she said, adding that in general in Germany, \u201cpatients are also free to decide which therapy they wish to undergo\u201d.<\/p>\n

A former German health minister, Karl Lauterbach, who was in charge during the pandemic, also replied, saying Kennedy \u201cshould take care of health problems in his own country\u201d such as a short life expectancy and excessive healthcare costs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Germany, doctors are not punished by the government for issuing false medical certificates. In our country, the courts are independent,\u201d Lauterbach wrote.<\/p>\n

Kennedy has backed several conspiracy theories and been accused of spreading vaccine misinformation and scientifically debunked health theories as part of the Trump administration\u2019s controversial Make America Healthy Again initiative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The German government has sharply rejected claims by the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, that doctors…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-239834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}