new delhi spread of infectious lumpy skin disease lsd among cattle is getting wider with more and more areas being affected by it that has already taken lives of over 5000 cattle in six statesut in the past one month the situation may get worse in the coming days as the vaccination efforts to control the spread of the virus will take some more time to reach the groundthough lsd is primarily a disease of cattle emerging evidence suggests that it can also cause mild illness in buffalo camel deer and horse due to its recent spread in unnatural hosts there are also growing concerns about its zoonotic implication although confirmatory evidence of human infection is lacking casualty figures from different states compiled by agriculture ministry show that rajasthan has reported the highest 2411 deaths of cattle followed by gujarat at 1879 punjab at 672 himachal pradesh at 38 andaman nicobar at 29 and uttarakhand at 26 instances of infection among thousands of cattle have also been reported from other states including haryana and uttar pradesh the current outbreak is quite extensive and lethal with a mortality of up to 15 particularly those being reported in western parts of the country including gujarat and rajasthanstates are currently fighting the menace through goatpox vaccine which has been authorised for emergency use in absence of specific vaccine for lsd the centre hopes the commercialisation of recently released indigenous vaccines lumpiprovaxind may be able to control the spread the commercialisation process has already begun we hope the ministry will issue expression of interest in a day or two so that private vaccine manufacturers will step in to come out with adequate number of doses to meet needs of farmers said yashpal director icarnational research centre on equines nrce hissarvaccine is developed by nrce in collaboration with the icarlndian veterinary research institute lvrl lzatnagar up the nrce is currently supplying limited doses of the newly developed lsd vaccines free of cost to gaushalas and those dairy farmers who have a large number of cattle in affected states we both nrce and ivri together dont have capacity to cover the entire affected population of cattle its commercialisation will however quickly increase the vaccination footprints said yashpal one dose of vaccine costing rs 12 per dose will provide immunity to cattle for a minimum period of one yearlsd was reported first time in india from odisha in 2019 the current outbreak has however been reported in aprilmay in gujarat and rajasthan before being spread to other statesthe disease in cattle is characterized by development of skin nodules which is associated with fever enlargement of lymph nodes and depression eventually resulting in reduced milk yield abortion in pregnant animals and sterility in bulls