President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to run the US health department, Robert F Kennedy Jr, is a vaccine-sceptic who once suggested that coronavirus had been engineered to spare Ashkenazi Jews.

Kennedy, who will lead a department with a $1.8tn budget with wide-ranging influence over drug regulation and public health, also has a history of using the word “Holocaust” to refer to vaccine policies.

During a 2022 anti-vaccine rally, he suggested life for Americans living under Covid restrictions was worse than the experience of Anne Frank.

He told the rally: “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you could hide in the attic like Anne Frank did”. He later apologised for the remark.

Trump announced his pick for the cabinet position on Truth Social, his social network, on Thursday afternoon, saying he was “thrilled” to nominate Kennedy to lead the department.

“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” Trump wrote.

“Mr Kennedy will restore these Agencies to the traditions of Gold Standard Scientific Research, and beacons of Transparency, to end the Chronic Disease epidemic, and to Make America Great and Healthy Again!”

Kennedy has steadfastly denied all charges of antisemitism, including in an appearance before Congress.

In July, he spoke at an event hosted by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the author and conservative activist.

Kennedy is ardently pro-Israel — his father Robert F Kennedy was murdered amid the 1968 Democratic presidential primaries by a Palestinian from Jordan over his support of Israel — and recently defended Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the late leader of the Chabad Chasidic movement, in the face of attacks by far-right commentator Candace Owens.