Has Germany punished doctors for issuing exemptions from wearing masks or getting Covid-19 vaccines

1. The claim and the official rebuttal

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asserted on social media that “more than a thousand German physicians, and thousands of their patients, now face prosecution and punishment” for issuing exemptions from masks or COVID vaccines; German ministers responded that the statement is “completely unfounded” and that doctors are not punished by the government for issuing medical certificates, with courts operating independently ^{[5] [1]}. Health Minister Nina Warken explicitly said there was never an obligation for doctors to administer COVID vaccines and that people who declined to vaccinate for medical, ethical or personal reasons were not criminally liable, while criminal proceedings were reserved for fraud and document forgery ^{[2] [6]}.

2. What prosecutions and arrests actually looked like

Independent reporting documents instances where doctors were detained or investigated on accusations of issuing bogus exemption or forged vaccination certificates—most famously a Dresden physician arrested in 2023 on suspicion of selling non‑medical exemption certificates for money ^[3]. Authorities recorded a sharp rise in forged vaccination or exemption documents in 2022 and 2023, and prosecutors opened tens of thousands of inquiries related to falsified COVID documents, according to investigative reporting cited in German-language coverage ^[4].

3. Legal and professional context: fraud versus legitimate clinical judgment

The pattern in official statements and press coverage is consistent: criminal and disciplinary action targeted forgery, falsification and commercial schemes that produced fake documents, not the issuance of medically justified exemptions by clinicians acting within accepted criteria ^{[2] [6]}. Some pandemic-era rules—vaccination mandates for certain professional groups and 2G/3G access regimes—created incentives and pressure around certificates, and narrow medical contraindications were the legitimate ground for exemptions; broader or non‑medical “exemptions” risked being treated as falsification ^[4].

4. Where reporting leaves room for dispute and why numbers get conflated

Confusion arises because large numbers of investigations into falsified documents exist alongside isolated prosecutions and a political argument over patient autonomy; Kennedy’s claim cited “more than a thousand” doctors but provided no specific evidence or cases, and German officials called his figures unfounded ^{[1] [5]}. Some outlets and commentators interpret tens of thousands of falsification investigations as evidence of widespread prosecution of conscientious doctors, but the sources cited by German reporting distinguish between criminal cases for fraud and routine medical practice ^{[4] [2]}.

5. Bottom line: accurate characterization and remaining uncertainties

It is accurate that German authorities investigated and in some instances arrested medical practitioners accused of issuing illegitimate exemptions or falsifying certificates—actions framed by officials as anti‑fraud enforcement, not political punishment of physicians for clinical decisions ^{[3] [2]}. It is not supported by the available reporting that Germany ran a program that broadly punished doctors for issuing genuine medical exemptions; Kennedy’s broader numeric claim lacks publicly cited evidence and was formally rejected by German health officials ^{[1] [6]}. Reporting limitations include an uneven public tally distinguishing prosecutions for forgery from legitimate disciplinary actions, so precise counts of prosecutions tied exclusively to exemption issuance versus fraud are not clearly documented in the sources reviewed ^[4].