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Federal health officials, scrambling to fund efforts to combat the spread of the Zika virus in the United States, said on Tuesday they have provided more stopgap money to various locales while calls grew for Congress to cut short its recess and act. Concern is mounting about the threat posed by the mosquito-borne virus after authorities in Florida last week reported the first signs of local transmission of Zika in the continental United States. (Grover and Clarke, 8/2)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Tuesday doled out $16 million in new grants to help local health officials keep track of birth defects caused by the Zika virus. The Obama administration has now spent about $201 million out of the $374 million it repurposed in April to fight Zika — leaving about half of its funding still available. The CDC, specifically, has also spent about half of its $222 million in available funding. (Ferris, 8/2)

Sen. Bill Nelson is urging Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to use one of the Senate's brief summer sessions to pass funding to fight the Zika virus. The Florida Democrat sent a letter to McConnell Tuesday saying he could use what's called a pro-forma meeting, which normally last for a few minutes at most, to avoid bringing every senator back to Washington. (Carney, 8/2)

The Virginia Department of Health will get $560,000 from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to support its ongoing efforts to prevent Zika from spreading in the state. The Department of Health’s website reports that 50 Virginians had been infected with the mosquito-borne virus as of Thursday. (Demeria, 8/2)

California will receive federal help this week to help identify and treat babies born with microcephaly, the devastating neurological defect caused by the Zika virus. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will give the state $720,000 to gather more information about microcephaly, refer more infants and families to health and social resources, and track outcomes down the line for infants born to Zika-infected mothers. In total, 40 states and U.S. territories will receive federal Zika grants in this round of between $200,000 and $720,000. (Caiola, 8/2)

State officials have nearly $1 million in new funds at their disposal to fight the Zika virus after receiving a pair of federal grants from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC is giving the Connecticut Department of Public Health two grants – a $579,000 grant announced Monday and a $400,000 grant announced Tuesday – to protect Connecticut residents from the Zika virus and monitor existing cases. Florida’s governor announced Monday as many as 14 cases of the Zika virus in his state may have been locally transmitted – the first cases of the virus transmitted in the continental United States. (Constable, 8/2)

A minority of women and girls living in states where there is a risk the Zika virus could spread use highly effective birth control methods, a new study published Tuesday reports. And in some states, nearly a quarter of girls and a third of women of childbearing age don’t use any birth control at all, the data suggest. The report, from scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said states could remove barriers that impede access to what’s known as long-acting reversible contraception — intrauterine devices and contraceptive implants — as a means of increasing use of these highly effective forms of birth control. (Branswell, 8/2)

Liz Tracy, 36, pregnant and worried, has had a long few days. When news came last week about a handful of locally transmitted Zika cases in Miami, she called her doctor right away, eager to get tested for the virus. “It wasn’t easy,” said Tracy, a grant writer for the Perez Art Museum, which is near the neighborhood where authorities confirmed Monday that the outbreak had grown by 10 cases. “You had to be a real pushy person to get a Zika test.” (Alvarado and Dennis, 8/2)

There are strong parallels between Zika and rubella, also known as German measles. An outbreak of rubella rocked the United States in the winter of 1964 and spring of 1965. More than 12 million people were infected with rubella. Like Zika, rubella is generally a minor illness. It causes a distinctive red rash, low fever, and symptoms resembling a bad cold that usually last a few days. For developing babies, however, infection can be a major catastrophe, causing a variety of birth defects, including blindness, deafness, heart damage, cataracts, internal organ damage, and intellectual disability. (Jennifer A. Reich, 8/2)

Under the eye of a microscope, Oxitec scientists use incredibly thin glass needles to inject two genes: a fluorescent marker for tracking the mosquitoes it releases into the wild and a "self-limiting" gene. The latter is essentially a death gene, and strangely simple. Oxitec releases nonbiting male mosquitoes with double copies of this gene, meaning they will pass the gene along to all their offspring, which will then die. (Gartner, 8/3)

Some Georgia blood banks will begin testing donors for the Zika virus. It comes as officials in Florida investigate several cases of the virus, which are believed to be the first transmitted by mosquitos on the U.S. mainland. ...Donors are tested for Zika at the same time they're tested for other infectious diseases, Evans said, and the tests don't delay the blood collection process. (Stokes, 8/1)

Schools and school districts are among those reacting to news of 14 locally-acquired cases of the Zika virus confirmed in South Florida. With the first day of school still weeks away, Miami-Dade County Public Schools sent out an automated voicemail to parents last week reinforcing basic anti-mosquito measures. (8/2)