Genetic Profiles of Ten African Swine Fever Virus Strains from Outbreaks in Select Provinces of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao, Philippines Between 2021 and 2023

African Swine Fever (ASF) outbreak was first recorded in the Philippines in July 2019. Since then, the disease has spread across provinces in Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao causing severe economic consequences for the country’s swine industry. . Here, we report the genome sequencing of ASF virus strains from outbreaks in several provinces of the Philippines between 2021 to 2023, using a long-read tiled amplicon sequencing approach. The coding-complete genomes generated ranged from 187,609 to 189,540 bp in length, with GC content of 38.4% to 38.5%. Notably, a strain from Bataan province had a 1.9-kb deletion at the 5’-end affecting several coding regions. The strains were characterized using 13 genes and regions, namely, B646L gene, CD2v serogroup, central variable region (CVR) of B602L gene, intergenic region (IGR) between I73R and I329L genes, IGR between A179L and A137R, O174L, K145R, Bt/Sj, J268L, ECO2, and multigene family (MGF) 505-5R, and MGF 505-9R and 10R. The ASFV strains were most related to Asian and European p72 genotype II strains. Genetic profiling provides valuable information on the diversity of local strains of ASFV in the Philippines, which are useful for epidemiology, diagnostics, and in vaccine development.