Animal rabies in the People's Republic of China

Since the late 1990s, the People's Republic of China (China) has consistently reported the second largest number of human rabies cases in the world; in this country, rabid dogs are the major source of rabies virus (RABV) transmission for both human and domestic animal rabies cases. In addition, other animal species have been reported to contract and transmit the virus. In this paper, an overview of the animal rabies situation in China is presented by referring to published articles (both English and Chinese) and governmental documents (guidelines, plans, notices and reports), which summarise the rabies situation in dogs, livestock, ferret badgers, bats, canids and rodents, and its threat to public health and animal husbandry in the country. Additionally, to obtain the complete phylogeny, full nucleoprotein gene sequences of representative field RABV strains circulating in China and its surrounding countries have been subjected to phylogenetic analysis, which showed, in agreement with previous studies, that RABVs in China have a broad genetic diversity that can be classified into three major clades, seven lineages and a number of sub-lineages. While significant progress on animal rabies epidemiology in China has been made, animal cases are still underestimated when compared with reported human cases. Rabies continues to spread into new areas even though human cases have been declining steadily since 2007. To minimise infection at the transmission source and to realise the goal of eliminating dog-mediated human rabies by 2030, surveillance and control of animal rabies should be strengthened, particularly in highly endemic provinces.