Athletes have already expressed concern about traveling to the heart of the Zika outbreak to compete in this summer’s Olympics. Now journalists are opting out entirely. Several NBC employees will not travel to Brazil to cover the games, including Today anchor Savannah Guthrie, who announced today that she’s pregnant. The CDC made a recommendation in February that women who are pregnant should not travel to Zika-affected countries, then later expanded the recommendation to include women who are considering getting pregnant.

The approach releases bugs with a bacteria that would render them and their offspring unable to transmit disease. Ordinarily the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is in the business of stopping diseases rather than spreading them. When it comes to mosquitoes, though, the foundation is funding an approach that aims to spread a disease among mosquitoes that would prevent those bugs from spreading Zika and other diseases.

One of Spain’s most famous athletes, the basketball player Pau Gasol, has said he is considering skipping this summer’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro due to fears over the Zika virus. Gasol said he has spoken to other athletes who were considering whether to compete at the Games. “It wouldn’t surprise me to see some athletes deciding not to participate in the games to avoid putting their health and the health of their families at risk,” Gasol, who plays for the Chicago Bulls, said.

A group of 150 prominent scientists, doctors and medical ethicists have signed a letter calling for this summer's Olympic Games to be postponed or moved from Rio de Janeiro due to the ongoing Zika virus outbreak in Brazil. In a letter directed to World Health Organization Director Dr. Margaret Chan, the group said that new findings about the Zika virus should result in the games being moved or postponed to safeguard the thousands of athletes, staff and reporters scheduled to attend the games.

Two hundred cases of the Zika virus have been confirmed and thousands are suspected in Cape Verde in the first African outbreak of the strain of the disease that has hit South America, the World Health Organisation has revealed. Three cases of babies with microcephaly – an unusually small head associated with incomplete brain development – have already been discovered on the island off Senegal on Africa’s west coast with 170 pregnant women among those infected.

Some 157 pregnant women in the United States and another 122 in U.S. territories, primarily Puerto Rico, have tested positive for infection with the Zika virus, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday.

With the Olympics set to begin in less than three months in Rio de Janeiro, one of Brazil's most successful soccer players has a surprisingly ominous message for international visitors: Stay away.

Major League Baseball "had no choice" but to move the series between the Pittsburgh Pirates and Miami Marlins from Puerto Rico to Miami because of concerns of the Zika virus, MLB announced on Friday.

Infecting mosquitoes with bacteria could help stop them spreading Zika, an early Brazilian study suggests. Scientists deliberately gave mosquitoes the Wolbachia bug and then later exposed them to Zika virus. They found mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia had less Zika virus in them and in some cases the virus had been deactivated. They say with more work, the approach could be one way to prevent mosquitoes passing Zika on to humans.

Ana Gabriela do Prado Paschoal sat at a desk in a small medical exam room and began a familiar, heartbreaking ritual. Your baby’s head is smaller than normal, Dr. Paschoal told the anxious mother, who had contracted the Zika virus while pregnant.

The Rio Olympics are less than 100 days away and it seems South Korean athletes are taking no chances when it comes to the threat of contracting the Zika virus. South Korea's stars will wear tracksuits which have been infused with insect repellant designed to keep mosquitoes away, as well as long pants and blazers for the opening and closing ceremonies.

"The level of alarm is extremely high,” said the head of the World Health Organization on Thursday, describing the spread of Zika virus around the world. As well it should be: The disease, which seems likely to be causing birth defects, could affect millions of people in several dozen countries. And the virus may be on its way into the U.S. As of Friday morning, no fewer than five New York residents have been diagnosed as Zika positive.

With Canadian Government funding, a team of innovators from Canada and Mexico have successfully tested a low cost, environmentally-friendly way of destroying the eggs of the mosquito genus that spreads dengue, and likely spreading the Zika virus. The 10-month study, conducted in a remote, urban area of Guatemala, documents a cheap, easy system to reduce virus-carrying Aedesgenus mosquitoes by capturing and destroying its eggs.

So far, no case of Zika has been contracted in Canada. But some people wonder if that might change. At first blush, this question seemed silly, especially when asked in the middle of a cold Canadian winter. But winter is receding and some people in Hamilton who know what they are talking about are asking that very question. Could Zika come to Canada?

Ticket revenues for 2016 Rio Olympics events have dropped significantly since an outbreak of Zika virus in Brazil gained international attention. From October until Jan. 20, 2016, ticket revenues for Olympics-related events were increasing an average of 8.85% each week, according to Ticketbis. In the second half of January, however, revenue dropped 56.4%, and continued to drop through at least the first half of February.

Public health experts have long suspected that a spike in birth defects in Central and South America was linked to the Zika virus, but they didn't know how. Today, the picture became a little bit clearer. A team of US researchers has discovered what they believe could be the mechanism by which the mosquito-borne virus hinders brain development in unborn children. Their study finds that the virus targets the outer layer...

Today, the CDC released some of the first evidence of a connection between Zika and microcephaly in Americans who contracted the virus while they were traveling. By Katie M. Palmer .

To help prevent the spread of the Zika virus in Puerto Rico, government officials on the island have declared condom price-gouging illegal. In early February, during a media briefing at the Governor's mansion, Puerto Rico's Secretary of the Department of Consumer Affairs, Nery Adames Soto, announced his agency has added prophylactics to the price-freeze list. Stores on the island also aren't allowed by DACO to raise the price on mosquito...

Ontario's first case of the Zika virus has been confirmed by the province's Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. In a statement, the province's chief medical officer of health said Friday that Public Health Ontario received positive test results for the virus in an individual who had travelled to Colombia. The ministry did not confirm whether the person affected is a man or a woman, but did say that the patient is not pregnant.

Pope says avoiding pregnancy “is not an absolute evil.” By Sarah Pulliam Bailey and Michelle Boorstein.