The LSD outbreaks documented worldwide in 2006–2020 (http://empres-i.fao.org/ (accessed on 2 June 2021), https://wahis.oie.int (accessed on 2 June 2021)) are highlighted as the green circles. The territories affected with LSD outbreaks are colored in pink, and those, which are officially LSD-free are in grey. The LSDV wild field and ‘vaccine-like’ strains as designated by some reports [31,36,40] are highlighted as the blue circles and red stars, respectively. The LSDV strains were discriminated into wild field and ‘vaccine-like’ variants based on the GPCR gene polymorphism as recommended [4,11,12] based on the relevant nucleotide sequences available in NCBI database (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ (accessed on 2 June 2021)). The maps were generated with Esri ArcGis Desktop 10.6.1 (www.esri.com (accessed on 2 June 2021)).