DES MOINES, Iowa - Iowa continues to battle the COVID-19 pandemic.
The state is now reporting that 16 counties have a have a high positivity rate, a sharp rise from just a handful early last week.
There were also more than 1,300 new cases reported Thursday.
The latest White House Coronavirus Task Force report placed Iowa in the "red zone" for new cases and the "yellow zone" for positivity rate. A new Task Force report is due on Sunday.
Much of the latest spike in COVID-19 cases is concentrated in northwest Iowa.
Eight counties at or near the border with South Dakota have high positivity rates, with three of them topping 25 percent.
Governor KIm Reynolds says the state health department is investigating the surge in the northwest region.
“I don’t know what’s going on up there,” Reynolds said. “It’s what we see a lot of times when we start to open things up and I think we should expect that you’re going to see probably a little uptick in cases.”
Single counties in southwest and southeast Iowa as well as the Dubuque area in northeast Iowa are also showing new spikes in COVID-19.
The state's highest concentration is in Sioux County (30.3%), followed by Lyon (26.7%) and Osceola (25.4%) counties.