The German government rejected claims by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that Berlin prosecuted doctors and patients for refusing Covid-19 vaccinations or mask mandates.

“The statements made by the U.S. Secretary of Health are completely unfounded, factually incorrect, and must be rejected,” German Health Minister Nina Warken said in a statement late Saturday.

“I can happily explain this to him personally,” she said. “At no time during the coronavirus pandemic was there any obligation for doctors to carry out vaccines against Covid-19,” Warken added.

“Anyone who did not wish to offer vaccines for medical, ethical or personal reasons were not criminally liable and did not have to fear penalties,” she said.

Warken added that “criminal prosecution took place only in cases of fraud and forgery of documents, such as the issuing of false vaccine certificates” or exemption certificates for masks.

 “Doctors [in Germany] decide independently and autonomously on the treatment of patients,” the minister stressed, adding that “patients are also free to decide which treatment they wish to receive.”

Kennedy said in a video post on Saturday that he had written to Warken after receiving reports that Germany was restricting “people’s abilities to act on their own convictions” in medical decisions.

He claimed that “more than a thousand German physicians and thousands of their patients” faced prosecution for issuing exemptions from mask-wearing or Covid-19 vaccination requirements during the pandemic.

Kennedy did not provide specific examples or identify the reports he cited, but he said Germany was “targeting physicians who put their patients first” and was “punishing citizens for making their own medical choices.”

He accused Berlin of undermining the doctor–patient relationship and replacing it with “a dangerous system that makes physicians enforcers of state policies.”

Former German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach also pushed back on the claims, telling Kennedy on X to “take care of health problems in his own country.”