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Zika infections have been confirmed in nine pregnant women in the United States, including one who gave birth to a baby with a rare birth defect, health officials said Friday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it's investigating 10 more reports of pregnant travelers with Zika. All got the virus while visiting or living in places with Zika outbreaks. (Stobbe, 2/29)

At least two pregnant Americans have opted for abortions after they were infected with the Zika virus, federal health officials reported Friday. A total of nine pregnant women have tested positive for the disease, and 10 more pregnant women are suspected to have the disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). All of the women are believed to have contracted the virus while traveling abroad. (Ferris, 2/26)

The Zika virus is a health threat not just to Latin America, but also to parts of the U.S. It's already a problem in Puerto Rico where there are nearly 120 cases so far, including five pregnant women. That's a concern because Zika may be involved in causing birth defects. The U.S. territory has declared a public health emergency and is working to protect residents from Zika and from the primary mosquito that carries the disease, Aedes aegypti. The species is largely responsible for the spread of Zika and many other tropical diseases, including yellow fever and dengue. It can breed anywhere it finds as little as a teaspoonful of standing water. (Allen and Arrieta, 2/29)

The Zika virus now has a foothold in a U.S. territory. Puerto Rico is reporting at least 117 Zika cases, including at least five pregnant women. That's of special concern because of Zika's possible link to birth defects. In Bayamon, a San Juan suburb, Monica Figueroa is waiting in line at a lunch truck. She's a nurse who works at a nearby clinic and she is pregnant — "about five months and a few weeks, something like that," she says in Spanish. Figueroa knows about Zika. She says she's wearing mosquito repellent but is not especially worried. "No one seems to be paying much attention to it," she says. (Allen and Arrieta, 2/26)

Scientists don't know all the conditions linked to the Zika virus. In one lab in Cali, Colombia, researchers are trying to connect Zika and the neurological condition Guillain Barre. (Aizenman, 2/28)

The walls at the Legacy Community Health clinic in Houston are plastered with signs urging patients like 22-year-old Josseline Lopez — who at 29 weeks pregnant came this week for an ultrasound — to tell their doctor if they have traveled to Central or South America. (Walters, 2/27)

Every time people move in or out of a block of rental rowhouses in Franklin Square, bits of their lives — garbage bags, broken furniture, fast-food containers — are abandoned under the same tree on the sidewalk. "The cats and the rats drag it around, and the wind blows stuff everywhere," said Leonard Spain, who has lived near the 200 block of N. Carey St. in Franklin Square for most of his 48 years. "This is what we deal with in poor communities. It's the social norm. It's a big public health problem." (Cohn, 2/28)