The disease initially reported from Shimoga district of Karnataka which is a primitive sylvan territory in Western Ghats of India. The disease spread out to other districts of Karnataka involving districts of Chikkamagalore, Uttara Kannada, Dakshina Kannada, Udupi, Chamarajanagar (2012), Belagavi (2016). In 2013, KFDV was detected in monkey autopsies from Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu state. Monkey deaths and human cases have now been reported from three neighbouring states bordering Karnataka, i.e., Wayanad (2013) and Malappuram districts of Kerala (2014), North Goa district of Goa state (2015), and Sindhudurg district of Maharashtra (2016).
