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.`-Reuters