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