PGPH-D-22-00177

India may need an additional metric to assess the endemicity of Malaria and plan its elimination

PLOS Global Public Health

Dear Dr. Sharma,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Global Public Health. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Global Public Health’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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Louisa Alexandra Messenger, MSc, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS Global Public Health

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Global Public Health’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Global Public Health does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: A well-written work presents the methods for incorporating SPR, ABER, and API parameters into categorizing malaria regions. I have no other comments on this paper.

Additionally, https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/searo/india/publications/national-framework-malaria-elimination-india-2016-2030.pdf?sfvrsn=c3e0ee29_4 , mainly Annex 7 Table on Malaria epidemiological situation for elimination planning by category used the author's formula: API = APR * ABER / 10.

Reviewer #2: The authors present an interesting concept of comparing different malaria indicators, that are used to inform targets and interventions. I have some concerns with their approach in terms of comparison and also several other minor comments:

Major comment

- It is not clear to me why the authors used the approach that they did for the comparison of the indicators (p 5&6). It would be much better to create a series of scatterplots to compare the correlation between the indicators and also summary measures of correlation. With that information, the authors could then be more informed in how the measures differed/were similar and also to develop thresholds if/when the indicators are comparable.

Minor comments

- Abstract

- Operational efficient indicator - would be more clear to remove and to first present the indicator and then explain how it's use is central to malaria elimination in India

- Finding - "...upon surveillance and other factors". Name a few of the other factors and it's really the quality of the surveillance program (vs surveillance)

- Finding - "...determines API and therefore latter is not..." This sentence is confusing and please be more direct (the API is not a robust indicator for malaria surveillance)

Title

- consider renaming the article to something that is more descriptive (e.g., comparing different malaria indicators for malaria elimination in India)

Introduction

- Malaria doesn't need to be capitalized (line 52)

- dependent on the quality of the surveillance program vs surveillance (line59)

- spell out abbreviations (line 63, line 79)

- I am confused as the API is presented as a rate (number of new confirmed malaria per 1,000) but then the thresholds are 0,1,etc. How is the API calculated then?

- the paragraph (lines 82-96) with the thresholds for API and categories is confusing. Would be helpful to explain the overlap between the API threshold and how it's decided to be in what phase (why certain states with the same API level in different elimination phases?)

- it would be better to start with a general introduction of the API and the elimination phases vs all of the details provided in the two paragraphs (lines 82-107)

- more information about how the 10% threshold of ABER was chosen (and this needs to be referenced) and the same for the API

- "Reliance on API alone...." (line 119-120) - this is what you're testing so I would word it differently as you don't know at this point if API alone is insufficient

- was vs is (line 121) - as the study has already been conducted. And try and reframe the objectives to be more precise (e.g., to evaluate the correlation between different malaria indicators (API, ABER, and SPR) for 2016-2019 in India)

- the concept of inadequate surveillance needs to be further explained in the introduction - why is this important for your approach to the analysis (threshold of API)? (lines 122-123)

Methods

- not sure what viz. (line 131) means and seen a few different times in the manuscript, please replace

- this is where is starts getting confusing for me. Why were these three levels of ABER chosen? How were these formulas developed and based on what information? As mentioned above, this relationship as formulated, needs to be substantiated based on preliminary descriptive work. And also, what is the end objective? If it's to understand how correlaed they are (or aren't) and how they diverge (at what thresholds of specific indicators), the current approach doesn't seem to address this

Results

- I would reduce the details in the results and focus on the main findings and make the graphs/tables central to the results section. It's too detailed oriented at the moment.

Discussion

- there should be more of a focus of how these results compare to other studies and contextualizing the reasons behind the study's findings

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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PGPH-D-22-00177R1

India may need an additional metric to assess the endemicity of malaria in low surveillance districts

PLOS Global Public Health

Dear Dr. Sharma,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Global Public Health. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Global Public Health’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Nov 16 2022 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at globalpubhealth@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pgph/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Louisa Alexandra Messenger, MSc, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS Global Public Health

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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2. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Global Public Health’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Global Public Health does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #2: The authors have done well in addressing my previous comments, although I have a few minor remaining comments.

Introduction

- This could use some more work before it is suitable for publication.

- For example, the first paragraph is too long, suggest dividing in two and the combining the very small third paragraph in the introduction (perhaps after is too detailed in terms of the

- Some of the information in paragraph 4 (lines 89-96) could be included in a context section in the methods (first section/paragraph in the methods) where the context of the study is described, including the currently surveillance situation for malaria

- combine paragraph 3 (too short and not connected to another paragraph) to paragraph 6 (lines 101-106)

- paragraph from lines 117-127 - also containing too much detail for an introductory paragraph, some of this information could be put into the context paragraph in the methods

- I would reword the study aim instead to be (using a PICOT format) - to compare and contrast malaria endemicity indicators API, ABER, and SPR, in india.

Methods

- API equation, please include reference

- unclear why these thresholds were chosen for margins of error (5%, 15%)

Results

- reasonably good (line 211) - what does this mean? moderate?

- and the conjunction of SPR (line 241) - reword to be more clear

- In a nutshell (line 242) - not appropriate scientific language In summary? Overall?

Discussion

- Facet (line 313) - Not clear what you mean here, would suggest instead remove

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #2: No

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[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

India may need an additional metric to assess the endemicity of malaria in low surveillance districts

PGPH-D-22-00177R2

Dear Dr. Sharma,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'India may need an additional metric to assess the endemicity of malaria in low surveillance districts' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Global Public Health.

Before your manuscript can be formally accepted you will need to complete some formatting changes, which you will receive in a follow up email. A member of our team will be in touch with a set of requests.

Please note that your manuscript will not be scheduled for publication until you have made the required changes, so a swift response is appreciated.

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Thank you again for supporting Open Access publishing; we are looking forward to publishing your work in PLOS Global Public Health.

Best regards,

Louisa Alexandra Messenger, MSc, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS Global Public Health

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