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Page 130 Botvinkin et al. One Health Implement Res 2023;3:125-34 https://dx.doi.org/10.20517/ohir.2023.19

Figure 2. The phylogenetic tree constructed by analyzing the nucleotide sequences of the 1,110 nt N gene fragment (position in the N
gene: 100-1,209) of rabies virus isolates. Legend: The Gannoruwa bat Lyssavirus sequence was used as an outgroup. Square brackets
indicate the genetic lineages of the rabies virus. Diamonds mark isolates from this study. The captions for the rest of the isolates
indicate GenBank access number, name of the isolate, country, region of detection (if known), year of detection, and host animal
species. Abbreviations for animal species: rd: raccoon dog; rf: red fox; sf: steppe fox (corsac); af: arctic fox; dog: dog; cow: cattle; w:
wolf; gt: goat; hu: a person; nd: no data. Bootstrap values are presented for critical nodes.

The spatial distribution of rabies in neighboring territories is presented in Figure 3 and Supplementary
Table 3.

DISCUSSION
In Russia, the nearest to the ARR rabies-enzootic territory is in the JAR, 200-300 km to the east, where the
infection was historically present in lowland areas, including the Amur River valley [10,12,13,26] . During 2017-
2018, animal rabies was documented in JAR , just before the outbreak in ARR. Later, in 2018-2020, the fox
[10]
rabies spread down the Amur River valley to Khabarovsk and Komsomolsk-na-Amure cities [Figure 3]. It
appears that viruses of the same lineage were present in adjacent regions of China at least since 2011
(GenBank sequence KM016898; Figure 2). According to a report from China in 2013, “…several hundred
foxes and raccoon dogs have been found dead in Bayannur, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region
(IMAR), and Tongjiangcity, Heilongjiang, and herdsmen have reported dogs, cattle, goats, horses, and
camels falling ill with rabies” . In 2006, 2012, 2013, and 2019, human rabies cases were reported in
[16]
Heilongjiang province .
[4,5]
In the west, the nearest to the ARR rabies-\-enzootic area is in the Trans-Baikal Region (TBR) of Russia in
the basin of the upper reaches of the Amur River and its tributaries. In the 1970s, animal and human rabies
was prevalent in TBR. Several RABV isolates were collected and later identified as Arctic-like . From 1983
[14]
to 2013, this region was considered rabies-free. Epizootic among foxes reemerged in 2014 because of an
introduction of the Steppe genetic RABV lineage [10,21,27] . Thus, recent outbreaks in the Trans-Baikal Region
of Russia and the ARR are disconnected and unrelated.

Since 2007, raccoon dog and fox rabies have been reported in the IMAR of China [16,17] . It has been
established that RABV of the Steppe and Arctic-like-2 lineages are circulating here simultaneously; however,