The authors have retracted this article [1] due to flaws in the methodology which led to inaccurate results. Artefacts and environmental contamination were not experimentally excluded as the reasons for the positive detection of herpesviruses and bunyaviruses. As a consequence, false positive results were obtained so that misleading and unsupported conclusions were drawn. All authors agree to this retraction.

[1] Lan, Y., Yan, Z., Guo, Y. et al. Arch Virol (2018).

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00705-018-4059-4