“…Orthohepevirus C sequences were initially detected in Germany in the widespread rat species Rattus norvegicus (Brown rat/Norway rat) [19,20]. To date, the vast majority of Orthohepevirus C genomes have been identified in Norway rats, from countries including the USA, China, Germany, France, Denmark, Lithuania, England, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Greece, Belgium, the Czech Republic, and Vietnam, with all viral strains belonging to HEV-C1 [19,20,24,25,29,[36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46]. Orthohepevirus C genomes have been detected in numerous other members of the family Muridae: HEV-C1 from Rattus rattus (Black Rat) has been detected in Indonesia, China, Kenya, and 12 other European countries comprising Lithuania, Germany, Hungary, Denmark, Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Belgium, and the Czech Republic [29,30,32,41,47,48]; Rattus tanezumi (Oriental house rat) in Vietnam and China have also been reported to harbor the virus [26,36,44,49]; in China, HEV-C1 RNA has been detected in Rattus losea (Losea rat), Rattus flavipectus (Yellow-breasted rat), and Bandicota indica (Greater bandicoot rat) [25,43,44]; Apodemus chevrieri (Chevrier's field mouse) and Apodemus agrarius (Striped field mouse) were positive for Orthohepevirus C detection; however, these variants are phylogenetically divergent from known HEV-C1 or HEV-C2, and thus, cannot yet be classified [36,50].…”