British doctor jailed for trying to kill man with fake Covid jab

Published November 7, 2024 Updated November 7, 2024 06:35am

LONDON: A British doctor was on Wednesday jailed for more than 31 years for an audacious but unsuccessful plot to kill his mother’s partner with a fake Covid-19 vaccine, which involved him forging medical documents and dressing in disguise to poison his victim.

Thomas Kwan, 53, passed himself off as a nurse and even took his own mother’s blood pressure before administering poison to her then partner Patrick O’Hara in Newcastle, northern England. O’Hara survived but suffered from necrotising faciitis, a potentially fatal flesh-eating bacterial infection, after receiving the jab. He also underwent multiple operations.

Kwan, a family doctor in Sunderland, pleaded guilty to attempted murder last month shortly after his trial began at Newcastle Crown Court. He had previously admitted a charge of administering a noxious substance.

Judge Christina Lam­bert sentenced Kwan to 31 years and five months in prison for what she desc­ribed as “an audacious plan to murder a man in plain sight”.

She told Kwan that his plan involved him “abusing your knowledge of the healthcare system”, adding that his actions damaged public confidence in the healthcare profession.

Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement after the sentencing that O’Hara was injected with “an as-yet unconfirmed toxin”. Prosecutor Peter Make­peace told jurors on the first day of Kwan’s trial: “Sometimes, occasionally perhaps, the truth really is stranger than fiction.”

Published in Dawn, November 7th, 2024

Opinion

Editorial

Trump 2.0
Updated 07 Nov, 2024

Trump 2.0

It remains to be seen how his promises to bring ‘peace’ to Middle East reconcile with his blatantly pro-Israel bias.
Fait accompli
07 Nov, 2024

Fait accompli

A SLEW of secretively conceived and hastily enacted legislation has achieved its intended result: the powers of the...
IPP contracts
07 Nov, 2024

IPP contracts

THE government expects the ongoing ‘negotiations’ with power producers aimed at revising the terms of sovereign...
Rushed legislation
Updated 06 Nov, 2024

Rushed legislation

For all its stress on "supremacy of parliament", the ruling coalition has wasted no opportunity to reiterate where its allegiances truly lie.
Jail reform policy
06 Nov, 2024

Jail reform policy

THE state is making a fresh attempt to improve conditions in Pakistan’s penitentiaries by developing a national...
BISP overhaul
06 Nov, 2024

BISP overhaul

IT has emerged that the spouses of over 28,500 Sindh government employees have been illicitly benefiting from BISP....