INTRODUCTION
Lumpy Skin Disease (LSD) is a virus disease of cattle, with significant morbidity and mortality. The disease is characterised by nodular skin lesions evident as lumps along with lymphadenopathy, with severe cases resulting in the death of the affected animal (Shumilova et al., 2022). The morbidity rate in LSD varies widely from 50–100% (Tuppurainen and Oura, 2012). While in general, the mortality rate is usually low (less than 5%) much higher mortality rates have been reported (Molla et al., 2017). The disease was largely confined to Africa until 1981 with significant outbreaks in Asia and Eurasia in recent years. The disease is therefore categorised as a notifiable emerging transboundary disease by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) (Sameea Yousefi et al., 2017). Recent years have seen a significant spread of the disease across the Middle East, Europe and Asia (Kumar et al., 2021). More recently in 2019, it has been reported in the Asia and Pacific region including India, China, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and a large outbreak in Bangladesh (Azeem et al., 2022).
LSD is caused by the Lumpy Skin Disease Virus (LSDV), a poxvirus of the genus capripoxvirus. The genome sequence of the Neethling strain of the virus suggested that similar to other poxviruses, it has a ~151 kbp size genome encoding 156 open reading frames (Tulman et al., 2001). The virus has a limited host range and largely affects cattle (Shen et al., 2011). Large variability in the morbidity of the disease has been reported, with morbidity rates across different studies ranging from 3%-85% (Babiuk et al., 2008; Şevik and Doğan, 2017). The mortality rate for previous outbreaks of the disease has been observed to be low (1%-3%), although in some regions high mortality rates (over 40%) have also been reported (Davies, 1991; Irons et al., 2005; Babiuk et al., 2008). Mortality rates of the disease from more recent outbreaks in Iraq and Egypt were also reported to be low (<1%) (Al-Salihi and Hassan, 2015; Tasioudi et al., 2016).
In mid-2022, the states of Gujarat and Rajasthan in India saw a large outbreak of LSD which spread across over seven states in the country and reported mortality of over 80,000 cattle over a very short span of three months. During the 2019 outbreak of the disease in India, morbidity rates were reported to be as low as 7.1%, and no mortality was reported (Sudhakar et al., 2020).
As India is home to over 190 million cattle, one of the largest in the world (Department of Animal Husbandry & Dairying, 2019), controlling LSDV infections is therefore of significant importance to prevent the socio-economic impacts of the disease in the country. Here, we report complete genome sequences of LSDV from the current outbreak of the disease, isolated from the affected cattle in India.