A worker at Belmont Park racetrack has died in what health officials believe may be a rare case of hantavirus in New York State.

The worker, whose name has not been released, was found earlier this month collapsed outside the ramshackle employee barracks, tucked between the horse barns and exercise pens where he and scores of other grooms, hot walkers and riders live, state health officials said. He was hospitalized and died on June 6 of what appears to have been hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, an advanced stage of the virus, according to the New York State Department of Health’s preliminary findings.

The illness, the pulmonary form of which has a nearly 40 percent fatality rate, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cannot be communicated between humans. It is typically contracted by inhaling air contaminated with rodent droppings in confined spaces, or, in rare cases, via a bite.

In New York State, there have been five cases of hantavirus since the state began tracking it in 1993: three were in Long Island and two upstate, according to the Health Department. Nationwide, there have been 728 reports of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome between 1993 and 2017, according to the C.D.C. (The center is reviewing the case at Belmont, which will officially determine if hantavirus caused the death.)