our economics correspondent andy verity. a 19 year old man has been charged with the murder of an elderly couple in west lothian in scotland. the bodies of mary and dennis fell were found in the town of livingston late on boxing day. tobyn salvatore made no plea and was remanded in custody. ajoint inquest is to be held into the deaths of two women who died of a herpes infection. kim sampson and samantha mulcahy died weeks apart after undergoing caesarian sections performed at different hospitals run by the east kent hospitals trust in the summer of 2018. a bbc investigation found links between the deaths, including that the two women had been operated on by the same surgeon. a new study is warning that climate change will expand the range of tropical cyclones, making millions more people vulnerable to devastating storms. at present, cyclones
a world renowned expert on herpes infection. the only common source here would be the surgeon who performed the operations, but if you think of the speed at which these women became unwell and the location of their infection, which was inside the abdomen, it does seem very much more likely and more biologically plausible that that was the original site of the infection. peter greenhouse says the strongest likelihood is that the surgeon had a herpetic whitlow, a small, often unnoticeable sore on his finger and that he unwittingly shared the herpes virus. even though he was wearing surgical gloves, a study of caesarean sections found the gloves tear in more than 50% of operations, potentially allowing the virus to infect the women. we showed both families the expert s opinion. that was the original site of the infection. | does that make sense? yeah.
they didn t know what was wrong. the hospital said samantha too had died of herpes, two rare deaths but seemingly no link. we were told there was no connection at all with the deaths. but that turned out not to be the case. the trust quickly discovered the same surgeon had operated on both women. documents we ve seen show that just two weeks after the second death, they were told it does look like surgical contamination . public health england concluded the strain of the virus the women died of was rare and maybe epidemiologically linked. these are certainly very unusual cases. very rare indeed. we shared the documents with peter greenhouse, a world renowned expert on herpes infection. the only common source would be the surgeon who performed the operations, but if you think of the speed at which these women became unwell and the location of their infection, which was inside the abdomen, it does seem very much more likely and more biologically plausible that was the original