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Jaswant et al. One Health Implement Res 2024;4:15-37 https://dx.doi.org/10.20517/ohir.2023.61 Page 21

Figure 2. Publications reporting RABV sequences by region from 2000 to 2023. (A) Time series of publications; (B) Numbers of
publications reporting sequence data by country, shaded by the number of publications and coloured by geographic region. Each
publication was attributed to one or multiple countries based on the origin of the RABV sequences, including five studies reporting
[52]
travel-associated human cases according to the country of origin. One study describing the global distribution of lyssaviruses , was
excluded from this figure. RABV: Rabies virus.

Africa, while AF1c and AF4 were found in Madagascar and Egypt respectively . The AF2 clade is found in
[51]
14 countries, mainly across West and Central Africa. The AF3 clade, which is associated with viverrids, is
found in Southern Africa, with sequences from South Africa and Botswana [Figure 4]. In Asia, RABVs
[52]
were categorised into four major clades: Cosmopolitan, Arctic (specifically the Arctic-like RABV, which has
been found circulating across eastern and southern Asia), Indian Subcontinent, and Asian. The
[76]
Cosmopolitan clade was widespread in Western [57,63-66] , Eastern [67-75] , and Northern Asia . Five subclades of
the Asian clade (SEA1-SEA5) were found within Eastern and Southeast Asia [77-80] . The Indian Subcontinent
clade was prevalent in South Asia [81-84] , with a few sequences from Western and Eastern Asia. While the
Arctic-like clade was found in parts of Eastern [68,85-89] and South Asia [21,58,81,90-95] . In the Americas clades were
categorised into dog-maintained and dog-derived variants, including established wildlife foci in skunks,
coyotes, gray foxes and mongoose .
[56]

Concurrent circulation of divergent clades and subclades within countries, and more locally, was commonly
reported across Asia and Africa. This was a less common feature in Latin America, where there are fewer
remaining dog-mediated rabies foci and, overall, less dog-related RABV sequence data (almost all partial
and just 26 WGS). Six African countries reported co-circulation of the Cosmopolitan and AF2 clades
(Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Ghana, Gabon and Nigeria) [13,14,51,52,96,97] . One study
identified co-circulation of Cosmopolitan AF1b subclade and AF3 clade in Botswana, but from different
parts of the country; AF1b in the north and AF3 in the south . Similarly six African countries reported co-
[63]