A British doctor, Thomas Kwan, on Monday, October 7, 2024, pleaded guilty to an unsuccessful plot to kill his mother’s partner with a fake COVID-19 vaccine.

53-year-old Kwan passed himself off as a nurse and took his own mother’s blood pressure before administering poison to her partner Patrick O’Hara in Newcastle, northern England.

Prosecutors said O’Hara survived but suffered from necrotising fasciitis, a potentially fatal flesh-eating bacterial infection, after receiving the fake COVID-19 vaccine.

Kwan, a family doctor in Sunderland, pleaded guilty to attempted murder on Monday shortly after his trial began at Newcastle Crown Court.

He had previously admitted a charge of administering a noxious substance.

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Prosecutor Peter Makepeace had told jurors on the first day of the trial last Thursday: “Sometimes, occasionally perhaps, the truth is stranger than fiction.”

He said Kwan was concerned about his mother’s will, which provided that her house would be inherited by O’Hara if he was still alive when his mother died.

Reuters quoted Makepeace as saying: “Mr Kwan used his encyclopedic knowledge of, and research into, poisons to carry out his plan.

“That plan was to disguise himself as a community nurse, attend Mr O’Hara’s address, the home he shared with the defendant’s mother, and inject him with a dangerous poison under the pretext of administering a Covid booster injection.”

Kwan checked into a hotel under a false name, used false number plates on his car and disguised himself with a wig to carry out the plan, Makepeace added.

The Star