Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro is to be investigated for comments in which he linked Covid-19 vaccines to AIDS.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has instructed the country’s top prosecutor, Augusto Aras, to look into the matter.
In an October 24 broadcast, Mr Bolsonaro said: “Official reports from the UK government suggest that fully vaccinated people are developing acquired immunodeficiency syndrome much faster than anticipated.”
Facebook and Instagram took down the video days later, citing violations of their rules and Mr Bolsonaro's assertion has also been rejected by doctors and scientists.
The Brazilian president, who is unvaccinated and has frequently pushed against vaccine mandates, has claimed that he was simply quoting an article from the magazine Exame.
Whether the investigation will take place, however, remains uncertain.
Aras rarely opposes the president and is yet to open an investigation into Bolsonaro's handling of the pandemic despite calls to do so by the Senate committee.
Bolsonaro has previously ignored local health protocols during the pandemic and complained that restrictions aimed at controlling the coronavirus do more harm than good.
More than 615,000 people have died of Covid-19 in Brazil, placing the country second in the world to the USA, who have had just over 805,000 deaths.
Immunization efforts, meanwhile, have bene credited for bringing the seven-day average of deaths below 300 a day in Brazil.
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