U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a video post earlier on Saturday that he had written German Health Minister Nina Warken, alleging that Germany was restricting patient autonomy in medical decisions and facing physicians for providing COVID-19-related exemptions. Kennedy also claimed that more than a thousand German physicians and thousands of their patients face prosecution and punishment for issuing exemptions from wearing masks or getting COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic.
Warken rejected Kennedy’s account in a statement issued late Saturday, saying that “The statements made by the US Secretary of Health are completely unfounded, factually incorrect, and must be rejected,” according to the report.
Kennedy told viewers that he had sent a letter to Warken based on reports “coming out of Germany” and said Germany was “limiting people’s abilities to act on their own convictions when they face medical decisions.” Kennedy did not provide specific examples in the video, or indicate which particular reports he was referencing.
In the report, Warken said that, during the coronavirus pandemic, there was never any obligation on the medical profession to administer COVID-19 vaccinations. She added that anyone who did not want to offer vaccinations for medical, ethical, or personal reasons was not liable to prosecution and “nor did they have to fear sanctions.”
Warken also disputed the scope of punishment Kennedy described, stating that there were no professional bans or fines for not getting vaccinated. She said that “Criminal prosecution was only pursued in cases of fraud and document forgery,” including cases involving the issuance of false vaccination certificates or fake mask certificates.
She further said that, in general, “patients are also free to decide which therapy they wish to undergo.” Kennedy, in turn, said his letter explained that Germany was targeting physicians who put patients first and punishing citizens for making their own medical choices.
Kennedy argued in the report that his letter described Germany as violating what he called the “sacred patient physician relationship,” replacing it with a “dangerous system” in which physicians become “enforcers of state policies.” He said the letter urged Germany “to restore medical autonomy, to end politically motivated prosecutions.”
Former German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, who was in charge during the pandemic, also responded directly to Kennedy on X. Lauterbach wrote that Kennedy “should take care of health problems in his own country,” and added that the U.S. has “Short life expectancy, extreme costs, tens of thousands of drug deaths and murder victims.”
Lauterbach further wrote that “In Germany, doctors are not punished by the government for issuing false medical certificates” and that “In our country, the courts are independent.”
The report said that while a majority of Germans were eager to get vaccinated during the pandemic, there were also protests by a small minority of vaccine skeptics in Germany, sometimes supported by far-right movements.