Colombia announced Saturday that more than 2,000 pregnant women in the South American country have been infected with the Zika virus, which is suspected of causing brain damage in newborns.

The National Health Institute reported that Colombia now has 20,297 cases of Zika infection, including 2,116 in pregnant women.

Yurman Torres is standing in line at the foot of Avila mountain, on the edge of Caracas, to fill a large jug with water, a rare commodity in crisis-hit Venezuela.

The scarcity of water is just one of a long list of headaches for the struggling South American oil giant, but it comes with a particularly nasty risk.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff vowed Friday to "win the war" against the Zika virus, but some experts criticized her government's response and warned the Olympics could fuel the disease's spread.

The tropical virus is blamed for cases of brain damage in babies as it sweeps through Latin America, and Rousseff, whose government is deploying 220,000 soldiers to help eradicate the mosquitoes that transmit it, likened the outbreak to a battle.

The Zika virus is "spreading explosively" in the Americas and the region may see up to four million cases of the disease strongly suspected of causing birth defects, the World Health Organization said Thursday.

As the number of suspected cases of microcephaly -- thought to be linked to the virus -- surged in Brazil, WHO head Margaret Chan said an emergency committee would meet on Monday to determine whether the Zika outbreak amounts to a global health emergency and how the world should respond. 

U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday announced the establishment of a task force headed by his deputy Joe Biden, to propel the quest to treat and cure cancer.

In a presidential memorandum, Obama announced the establishment of the "White House Cancer Moonshot Task Force," which will issue findings about how to better detect, treat and cure the killer disease.

Cigarette smoking among Australian youth has hit a record low, researchers said Thursday as they hailed a possible "smoke-free generation" thanks to an aggressive public health drive deterring people from lighting up.

The decline was applauded as a success story, with plain cigarette-packaging laws and higher prices credited as factors, according to a report published in the Public Health Research and Practice journal. 

The release of new figures apparently finding fewer cases of microcephaly in Brazil than first feared is adding force to calls for more research into the link between the rare birth defect and the spreading Zika virus.

Health experts have been looking at 4,180 suspected cases of microcephaly reported since October in Brazil, where authorities said the birth defect could be linked to the virus and announced that 220,000 military personnel were being deployed to help eradicate the Aedes aegypti mosquito that transmits Zika.

.US. President Barack Obama has called for faster research on the quick-moving Zika virus, which is spread by mosquitoes and has been linked to a rise in birth defects in Brazil.

Obama on Tuesday urged better diagnostic tests and the development of vaccines and treatments against the virus, which the World Health Organization has said is likely to spread throughout the Americas.

Denmark and Switzerland on Wednesday joined a growing number of European countries to report Zika infections in tourists returning from Latin America, where the mosquito-borne virus has been blamed for a surge in birth defects.

"A Danish tourist who travelled to Central and South America was diagnosed on his return with the Zika virus," a hospital in eastern Denmark said in a statement late Tuesday.

Colombia issued an alert Tuesday over the Zika virus, which has already infected 13,800 people in the country, as it warned that the number is likely to uptick as the disease spreads.

The Ministry of Health advised mayors of towns below a certain elevation to "declare a green alert for public and private hospitals facing a possible increase in Zika cases."