Until today, Republicans had been stonewalling President Obama's $1.9 billion request for emergency funding to fight Zika, which experts anticipate will soon take root in the United States. Now, Senator Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Labor, Health, and Human Services Appropriations Subcommittee, says she's reached a $1.1 billion deal with Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) to finally start preparing for the pandemic. The Senate is expected to vote on the deal next week.

This is good news, but it may be too little too late. Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes—carriers of the virus—roam freely in the Southeastern United States, and a vaccine is years in the making. I wrote this week about why mosquito-borne illnesses are so hard to defeat, and how researchers here in Seattle are trying to better understand them. We may not have Aedes aegypti mosquitoes outside of a lab here in Seattle (not yet, at least), but the virus is also sexually transmitted. Earlier this month, the first case of Zika was reported in a King County man who had recently traveled to Colombia.

Meanwhile, bad news for Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff: The leader who declared war on the Aedes aegypti mosquito is suspended pending corruption charges.