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U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday approved a bill to provide financial incentives to companies developing treatments for the Zika virus, and the White House said President Barack Obama was expected to sign the legislation although it is insufficient to meet the challenge. The measure allows the Food and Drug Administration to include Zika drug developers in the agency's priority review voucher program. The program encourages manufacturers to study treatments for diseases that might not be profitable by expediting the regulatory review of a more lucrative drug in their research pipeline. (Clarke and Morgan, 4/12)

U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to sign a bill to provide financial incentives to companies developing treatments for the Zika virus, a White House spokeswoman said, but the bill passed by the House of Representatives on Tuesday is insufficient to meet the challenge. "We hope that this legislation encourages private sector partners to address the challenge of Zika, but it contains no funding and is ultimately insufficient on its own, since it doesn't provide the $1.9 billion in funding that our public health experts have said is needed right now to prepare Americans for the imminent local transmission of Zika in this country," spokeswoman Katie Hill said. (Gardner, 4/12)

When Stephanie Billmayer flew back to Seattle from Brazil on March 1, the first thing she did was schedule a test for the Zika virus. Eight weeks pregnant, the English teacher wanted only to know her unborn baby was safe from the devastating epidemic exploding across Latin America and the Caribbean. But it was more than a month before she got any answers. Her blood test was among dozens from Washington state and thousands across the U.S. backlogged at a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lab in Fort Collins, Colo. (Aleccia, 4/13)