Elkhart ? A Kansas man who died of Hantavirus last week was from rural Morton County in far southwest Kansas, health officials said.

It was Morton County’s third death from Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome in the past decade. The state has recorded six fatal cases of Hantavirus since 1993. Of the 18 confirmed hantavirus cases since 1993, at least 14 were diagnosed in southwest Kansas residents.

“It’s pretty much here to stay in this part of the state,” said Joan Bolin, administrator of public health for the Morton County Health Department. “We are considered a frontier county.”

Jeff Mills, 39, who lived with his family near Rolla, died last Thursday at Morton County Hospital in Elkhart.

Larry Mills, Jeff Mills’ brother and principal of Norton Junior High School, said he and other family members had been down to see Jeff Mills’ wife, Carrie Mills, who came down with symptoms of the virus a week earlier and was admitted to St. Catherine Hospital.

Carrie Mills recovered, but her husband was hospitalized the next week and died within days.

The Millses were thought to have contracted the virus while working outside a woodpile and in a building where mice might have been living. Morton County is in far southwest Kansas, bordering both Colorado and Oklahoma.