West Yorkshire doctor who lied to get Covid jab suspended

A doctor lied to receive a Covid jab for which he was not eligible

A doctor who lied to receive a Covid jab for which he was ineligible has been suspended for two months.

Srinivasa Kummaraganti posed as a Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust employee to get the jab in February 2021.

A Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service panel found the "deliberate deceptions" amounted to misconduct and impaired his fitness to practise.

Dr Kummaraganti said he "utterly" regretted his actions and apologised.

He told the panel his judgement had been "clouded" by the fact he had been returning to India to care for his elderly parents and was concerned he might catch Covid and give it to them.

The tribunal accepted the "isolated event in an otherwise unblemished career" had been "committed under unusual circumstances".

But it concluded a short suspension was necessary to protect public confidence in the medical profession.

Dr Kummaraganti had admitted turning up at the NHS trust's Covid vaccine centre wearing an ID badge and a stethoscope on 21 February.

He told staff he had received his first jab on 1 January and had been called for his second, neither of which was true.

'Deliberate and multi-faceted deception'

At the time, the trust had been offering eligible staff their second doses of the vaccine. Dr Kummaraganti's wife worked for the trust and was one of those called for vaccination but had repeatedly told her husband he was ineligible.

Elizabeth Dudley-Jones, the counsel acting for the General Medical Council (GMC), told the tribunal Dr Kummaraganti had carefully thought-out his plan to "hoodwink" trust employees and this "exacerbated his misconduct".

Lee Gledhill, on behalf of Dr Kummaraganti, noted the doctor had "embarked on significant efforts towards remediation" including a series of courses on probity and ethics and apologising to all the staff involved.

The panel, chaired by barrister Lindsay Irvine, said Dr Kummaraganti's "deliberate and multi-faceted deception" of colleagues during a public health crisis had been serious breach of the good medical practice code.

But it added he had "well-developed insight" into his wrongdoing, "fully appreciated the gravity of his actions" and the risk of repetition was very low.

The tribunal also took into account the "profound impact" of the Covid pandemic and the doctor's concern for his parents.

It said an erasure of his right to practise would be "disproportionate" but suspension would have "a deterrent effect, sending the right message to Dr Kummaraganti and the profession as a whole".

Dr Kummaraganti, a former locum consultant in diabetes and endocrinology at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, has not practised medicine in the UK or India since 2018 but was given an emergency licence by the GMC in 2020 to help with the response to the Covid pandemic.