(ABC 6 NEWS) -- Both Minnesota and Iowa have seen more confirmed cases of the H1N1 virus in the last few days.
 
Iowa health officials say the number of confirmed cases has reached 66.
 
That's six more than Wednesday.

The number of H1N1 cases in Minnesota is also up. It now stands at 37.

You may have noticed the number of cases in both states has been climbing a little quicker than they did a week or so ago.
 
There's a reason for that, both Iowa and Minnesota are now confirming H1N1 cases in state, meaning they no longer have to wait for the backlogged CDC.

We took a tour of the labs at the Minnesota Department of Health to find out what this means for you.

It's been a busy few weeks at the Minnesota Department of Health.

"It was really, really crazy here for the first couple of weeks," says David Boxrud.

David Boxrud is the molecular epidemiologist supervisor at MDH, and has basically been the leader for Minnesota during the H1N1 outbreak.
    
It’s in these labs where workers are testing for the virus.

"The strain of influenza would not be detected by normal methods, so the CDC came up with a new method to specifically test this type of flu," he says.
    
From start to finish each sample will stay with one person. 

That person will travel from lab to lab to complete the process and confirm the case. 

It's a process that takes about five hours.

While that may seem long, its nothing compared to the week it took before the lab started testing on its own.

"Its much simpler if we can say you're positive for this flue strain, or, you don't have this strain," Boxrud says.

It's through this process; his team has figured a few things out.

“We've been preparing for this sort of a scenario for years, but until you're in the scenario, you don't know, what you don't know," he says.

He says things like adapting staff and the equipment in his lab, all worked well, but he'd like more training in the future.

And, while he says this time we lucked out, because the strain wasn't so severe.
   
"If it were to happen again, I think that we'd even respond better in the future," he says.

Boxrud says if another virus outbreak happens, the CDC would go through a similar verification process before individual states were allowed to confirm on its own.