PGPH-D-21-00860

The impact of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning design features on the transmission of viruses, including the 2019 novel coronavirus: a systematic review of ventilation and coronavirus

PLOS Global Public Health

Dear Dr. Fleck,

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 May 28 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.

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• 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,

Olatunji O Adetokunboh, MD, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS Global Public Health

Journal Requirements:

1. Your co-authors, Gail M. Thornton (gthornto@ualberta.ca), Emily Kroeker (ekroeker@ualberta.ca), Natalie Fleck (njfleck@ualberta.ca), and Lisa Hartling (hartling@ualberta.ca), have not confirmed authorship of the manuscript. We have resent them the authorship confirmation email; however please check that the above email address for them is correct and follow up personally to ensure they confirm. Please note that we cannot pass your manuscript to Production until we have received confirmations from all co-authors.

Just in case your co-authors are having difficulty confirming their authorship, you may advise them to send us an email at globalpubhealth@plos.org and we will confirm their authorship on the authors' behalf.

2. Please amend your detailed Financial Disclosure statement. This is published with the article, therefore should be completed in full sentences and contain the exact wording you wish to be published.

State the initials, alongside each funding source, of each author to receive each grant.

3. Please update the completed 'Competing Interests' statement. Please declare all competing interests beginning with the statement “I have read the journal's policy and the authors of this manuscript have the following competing interests:”.

4. Please provide a complete Data Availability Statement in the submission form. If your research concerns only data provided within your submission, please write “All data are in the manuscript and/or supporting information files” as your Data Availability Statement.

5. Please provide separate figure files in .tif or .eps format only and ensure that all files are under our size limit of 20MB.

For more information about how to convert your figure files please see our guidelines: https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/s/figures

6. 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):

Dear Authors,

This is a well written systematic review on a very important and critical subject. However, find below few comments:

1. Page 2; Line 20: Write the official name of SARS-CoV-2 first.

2. Page 4; Line 47: Change "[a]irborne".

3. Page 10; Line 166: Write out carbon dioxide in full first.

4. Include the list of abbreviations.

5. State the strengths and limitations of this study.

6. Please state the role of each reviewer.

7. References No 1: The link is inactive.

8. Figure 1: The title should be underneath the flow chart.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

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: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: Yes

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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: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: 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: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: 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: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reviewer #2: Title: The impact of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning design features on the transmission of viruses, including the 2019 novel coronavirus: a systematic review of ventilation and coronavirus

Comment

Generally, the study is good to be published, however, it needs some correction. The manuscript has not taken on board the title. When reading the manuscript, you don’t find the issues of heating and air conditioning being mentioned.

Suggestion: The title should read as ‘The impact of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning design features on the transmission of viruses, including the 2019 novel coronavirus: a systematic review of ventilation and coronavirus and then the rest of the manuscript should remain as it is OR the manuscript should be rewritten to take on board the issues of heating and air conditioning design features.

Reviewer #3: This manuscript is a very well written and clear systematic review of the effectiveness of ventilation for mitigating transmission of coronavirus. I agree with the conclusions made from the analysis and found no grammatical errors. An enjoyable read of important evidence synthesis. No further comments.

Reviewer #4: The authors have produced a very thorough and well written systematic review of the literature on how HVAC systems influence coronavirus transmission. The analysis and findings are clearly presented and the discussion highlights gaps in the literature which require future research.

Reviewer #5: A useful summary of the currently available information. I have no specific comments or suggestions for improvement or clarity. Looking forward to the paper's publication and the discussion it generates.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Dr. Joseph C. Hokororo

Reviewer #3: No

Reviewer #4: No

Reviewer #5: Yes: Janet M. Macher

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The impact of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning design features on the transmission of viruses, including the 2019 novel coronavirus: a systematic review of ventilation and coronavirus

PGPH-D-21-00860R1

Dear Dr Fleck,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'The impact of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning design features on the transmission of viruses, including the 2019 novel coronavirus: a systematic review of ventilation and coronavirus' 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.

IMPORTANT: The editorial review process is now complete. PLOS will only permit corrections to spelling, formatting or significant scientific errors from this point onwards. Requests for major changes, or any which affect the scientific understanding of your work, will cause delays to the publication date of your manuscript.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact globalpubhealth@plos.org.

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

Best regards,

Olatunji O Adetokunboh, MD, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS Global Public Health

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