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

“The statements made by the US secretary of health are completely unfounded, factually incorrect, and must be rejected,” Germany’s health minister, Nina Warken, said in a strongly worded statement released late on Saturday.

In a video posted on X, Kennedy, a longtime vaccine sceptic, said he had written a letter to Warken calling for an “end to politically motivated prosecutions”. He provided no sources for his claims and misspelled Warken’s name as “Workin”.

Kennedy alleged the government was “limiting people’s abilities to act on their own convictions when they face medical decisions”, accusing it of “violating the sacred patient-physician relationship” and of making doctors “enforcers of state policies”.