Dear Dr Dutta,

Thank you very much for submitting your manuscript "Using mobility data in the design of optimal lockdown strategies for the COVID-19 pandemic in England" for consideration at PLOS Computational Biology.

As with all papers reviewed by the journal, your manuscript was reviewed by members of the editorial board. In light of the reviews (from the editor, see below), we would like to invite the resubmission of a significantly-revised version that takes into account the editors' comments.

We cannot make any decision about publication until we have seen the revised manuscript and your response to the editor's comments. Your revised manuscript is also likely to be sent to reviewers for further evaluation.

When you are ready to resubmit, please upload the following:

[1] A letter containing a detailed list of your responses to the review comments and a description of the changes you have made in the manuscript. Please note while forming your response, if your article is accepted, you may have the opportunity to make the peer review history publicly available. The record will include editor decision letters (with reviews) and your responses to reviewer comments. If eligible, we will contact you to opt in or out.

[2] Two versions of the revised manuscript: one with either highlights or tracked changes denoting where the text has been changed; the other a clean version (uploaded as the manuscript file).

Important additional instructions are given below your reviewer comments.

Please prepare and submit your revised manuscript within 60 days. If you anticipate any delay, please let us know the expected resubmission date by replying to this email. Please note that revised manuscripts received after the 60-day due date may require evaluation and peer review similar to newly submitted manuscripts.

Thank you again for your submission. We hope that our editorial process has been constructive so far, and we welcome your feedback at any time. Please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or comments.

Sincerely,

Virginia E. Pitzer, Sc.D.

Deputy Editor

PLOS Computational Biology

Virginia Pitzer

Deputy Editor

PLOS Computational Biology

***********************

I found this to be an interesting and comprehensive analysis. My recommendation, at this point, is not to send this out for further review. In it's current form, I am concerned that this work will not be well reviewed and I would encourage the authors to take some additional time to develop the manuscript further and consider a re-submission after considerable revision. The analysis presented herein is both comprehensive and complex. But, at present, it reads more as a technical report with limited scope to the explicit setting that is presented. I would encourage the authors to take some time to restructure the presentation of the results and discussion, in particular, to highlight the generality of this work and the contribution in the light of the other work in the field. The authors do take some time to compare the work to previous efforts in the introduction, but this should be revisited in the discussion after the reader has digested the work that is presented. For many readers, this work will be overwhelming given the many technical areas that are overlapping: disease surveillance, age structured models, CDRs, ABC, and optimal control. The intersection of these many approaches is a real strength of this work, in my opinion, but that also requires that additional effort be taken to communicate how these pieces come together in the synthesis of the work. The optimal control component of this is really interesting and may also be the most heavily scrutinized because of the need to make explicit value judgements in the objective function (the authors acknowledge in the methods that this will be the responsibility of the decision-maker). I would encourage the authors to take more time in the discussion to go through the implications of this work and highlight whether they want the reader to take away from this a message about the optimal policies for the UK or a template for approaching the complex problem of designing optimal control strategies. If the latter, the results should be structured to highlight the benefits and challenges of this approach and the discussion should attempt to translate those in less technical detail.

I would encourage the authors to further develop this work and I would look forward to the opportunity to review a revised manuscript.

Figure 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. 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 us at figures@plos.org.

Data Requirements:

Please note that, as a condition of publication, PLOS' data policy requires that you make available all data used to draw the conclusions outlined in your manuscript. Data must be deposited in an appropriate repository, included within the body of the manuscript, or uploaded as supporting information. This includes all numerical values that were used to generate graphs, histograms etc.. For an example in PLOS Biology see here: http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001908#s5.

Reproducibility:

To enhance the reproducibility of your results, PLOS recommends that you deposit laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions, please see http://journals.plos.org/compbiol/s/submission-guidelines#loc-materials-and-methods

Dear Dr Dutta,

Thank you very much for submitting your manuscript "Using mobility data in the design of optimal lockdown strategies for the COVID-19 pandemic" for consideration at PLOS Computational Biology. As with all papers reviewed by the journal, your manuscript was reviewed by members of the editorial board and by several independent reviewers. The reviewers appreciated the attention to an important topic. Based on the reviews, we are likely to accept this manuscript for publication, providing that you modify the manuscript according to the review recommendations.

We have received two complementary reviews for the revised manuscript. Both reviewers raise a few minor points that should be considered in a revision -- specifically some clarification on notation, inclusion of references to ABC methods, and clarification about assumptions. Please address these small changes and submit a revised manuscript. I will be able to make a final determination without additional review by the referees.

Note that R2's comments appear to reference an alternate page/line numbering system: below I have identified a few specific points to address with the number system of the original document.

1. Page5/20 - clarify the sentence "we assume the ones for England are well represented by those". Perhaps just simplify to "We use the contact matrix for England is the same as that for the whole of the UK "

2. Figure 4 legend -- add "we" before "note"

3. L489 - provide some justification for the claim that the 30-day prediction horizon is "aligned with the COVID-19 time scale for transmission" (serial interval is much smaller than 30 days.)

Please prepare and submit your revised manuscript within 30 days. If you anticipate any delay, please let us know the expected resubmission date by replying to this email. 

When you are ready to resubmit, please upload the following:

[1] A letter containing a detailed list of your responses to all review comments, and a description of the changes you have made in the manuscript. Please note while forming your response, if your article is accepted, you may have the opportunity to make the peer review history publicly available. The record will include editor decision letters (with reviews) and your responses to reviewer comments. If eligible, we will contact you to opt in or out

[2] Two versions of the revised manuscript: one with either highlights or tracked changes denoting where the text has been changed; the other a clean version (uploaded as the manuscript file).

Important additional instructions are given below your reviewer comments.

Thank you again for your submission to our journal. We hope that our editorial process has been constructive so far, and we welcome your feedback at any time. Please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or comments.

Sincerely,

Matthew (Matt) Ferrari

Associate Editor

PLOS Computational Biology

Virginia Pitzer

Deputy Editor-in-Chief

PLOS Computational Biology

***********************

A link appears below if there are any accompanying review attachments. If you believe any reviews to be missing, please contact ploscompbiol@plos.org immediately:

[LINK]

We have received two complementary reviews for the revised manuscript. Both reviewers raise a few minor points that should be considered in a revision -- specifically some clarification on notation, inclusion of references to ABC methods, and clarification about assumptions. Please address these small changes and submit a revised manuscript. I will be able to make a final determination without additional review by the referees.

Note that R2's comments appear to reference an alternate page/line numbering system: below I have identified a few specific points to address with the number system of the original document.

1. Page5/20 - clarify the sentence "we assume the ones for England are well represented by those". Perhaps just simplify to "We use the contact matrix for England is the same as that for the whole of the UK "

2. Figure 4 legend -- add "we" before "note"

3. L489 - provide some justification for the claim that the 30-day prediction horizon is "aligned with the COVID-19 time scale for transmission" (serial interval is much smaller than 30 days.)

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Authors:

Please note here if the review is uploaded as an attachment.

Reviewer #1: find my comment in the attachment

Reviewer #2: See the attached file

**********

Have all data underlying the figures and results presented in the manuscript been provided?

Large-scale datasets should be made available via a public repository as described in the PLOS Computational Biology data availability policy, and numerical data that underlies graphs or summary statistics should be provided in spreadsheet form as supporting information.

Reviewer #1: None

Reviewer #2: None

**********

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.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Figure 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. 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 us at figures@plos.org.

Data Requirements:

Please note that, as a condition of publication, PLOS' data policy requires that you make available all data used to draw the conclusions outlined in your manuscript. Data must be deposited in an appropriate repository, included within the body of the manuscript, or uploaded as supporting information. This includes all numerical values that were used to generate graphs, histograms etc.. For an example in PLOS Biology see here: http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001908#s5.

Reproducibility:

To enhance the reproducibility of your results, PLOS recommends that you deposit laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/s/submission-guidelines#loc-materials-and-methods

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PLOS.pdf

Attachment

Submitted filename: PCOMPBIOL-D-20-01162.pdf

Dear Dr Dutta,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'Using mobility data in the design of optimal lockdown strategies for the COVID-19 pandemic' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Computational Biology.

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.

Should you, your institution's press office or the journal office choose to press release your paper, you will automatically be opted out of early publication. We ask that you notify us now if you or your institution is planning to press release the article. All press must be co-ordinated with PLOS.

Thank you again for supporting Open Access publishing; we are looking forward to publishing your work in PLOS Computational Biology. 

Best regards,

Matthew (Matt) Ferrari

Associate Editor

PLOS Computational Biology

Virginia Pitzer

Deputy Editor-in-Chief

PLOS Computational Biology

***********************************************************

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Authors:

Please note here if the review is uploaded as an attachment.

Reviewer #1: I believe the authors have answered to all my concerns and the paper can be published in PLOS computational biology as is.

Reviewer #2: Check the reference style since there are many references cited in different formats

Check and uniform the style of the list of parameters you made at page 8

**********

Have the authors made all data and (if applicable) computational code underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data and code underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data and code 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 or code —e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: None

**********

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.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No