Following the death last month of a Gansevoort man who contracted Powassan virus from a tick, a second Saratoga County resident has been hospitalized with the rare disease and a third is suspected of being infected, according to the state Health Department.

The patient with the suspected case has been released from medical treatment, health officials said. Both new cases are adult patients exposed to the virus in June. Health officials would not release further details, citing privacy rules.

The three patients who contracted Powassan virus were from different towns, according to Bryon Backenson, director of the State Health Department's Vector Surveillance Unit.

The cluster of Powassan virus cases is highly unusual, but not unheard of, Backenson said. Before this year, there had been just 24 cases of the virus statewide since 2000, resulting in five deaths, including another Saratoga County resident in 2013. But there was one other cluster of three cases in Westchester County once, in 2007, he said.

Still, the state is upping its surveillance of ticks in Saratoga County in particular. Tuesday, Backenson was at Veterans Memorial Park in Clifton Park, where media were invited to watch his staff drag squares of light-colored canvas along the trails to collect ticks for testing. The park is one of 10 new sites where the Health Department will collect ticks, added to the five sites where it has collected the tiny bugs already.

In light of recent cases of Powassan virus, "we have a responsibility to try to investigate this a little further," Backenson said.

Ticks will be tested for various pathogens, including the germs that cause the much more common Lyme disease, babesiosis and anaplasmosis, as well as Powassan virus, Backenson said. Test results are expected by mid-August.

Previous routine testing of 1,200 ticks in Saratoga County since 2009 have not detected Powassan virus, Backenson said. Nor has the illness been found in more than 8,000 ticks collected during the same time from Columbia County to the Canadian border.

The illness remains quite rare. Backenson said that area residents should not panic over the recent cases but continue to take precaution against tick bites, as they have learned to do with the much more common Lyme disease.

More frequent checks for ticks might be prudent after being outdoors, Backenson said. Unlike Lyme disease, which may a tick more than a day to transmit to a human, a tick can infect a person with Powassan virus in 15 minutes.

And Powassan virus can be serious. While some people may contract it and never know, up to 15 percent of people who get it will die, according to Dr. Todd Duthaler, an emergency doctor at Saratoga Hospital.

The virus can be tough to diagnose. It does not produce a rash the way that Lyme disease can, but results in vague symptoms like headache, fever, confusion, nausea and vomiting.

Those symptoms, caused by the swelling of the brain or the brain lining, can progress rapidly, however, Duthaler said. He recommended getting to the hospital if such symptoms become intense or severe.

And if you spend time outdoors and suspect Powassan could be the culprit of an illness, say so, even if you never found a tick, Duthaler said.

"It's very possible to have ticks in your hair that you may never even know about," he said.

The Health Department is in the process of sending letters out to alert doctors to the possibility of Powassan virus in the region, Backenson said.

It took weeks for Charles Grant Smith III to be tested for Powassan, his son and daughter said Monday. The 74-year-old Gansevoort man died last month, after being bit by an infected tick in late April.

There is no cure for Powassan virus. Doctors treat an infected person with medication to reduce swelling and pain, in turn helping the patients' own immune system fight the disease, Duthaler said.

State Health Department officials will be on hand Tuesday evening at the Saratoga County Fair in Ballston Spa with information on tick-borne illness as well as avoiding ticks, Backenson said.