PONE-D-20-13386

The First Wave of COVID-19 in Israel - Initial Analysis of Publicly Available Data

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Last,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’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.

The quantitative approach is too straightforward and should be seriously extended.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jul 25 2020 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 plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Stefan Cristian Gherghina, PhD. Habil.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: No

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data 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 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 ONE 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: While I found the article interesting and well developed, I personally believe it is too descriptive at this stage and very limited in the scope of analysis. While comparing Israel and Sweden because of similar size might sound compelling at first, more rigorous tests and comparisons are needed. The two countries have very different characteristics in terms of climate, culture, population density, rural vs. urban living, etc. - Hence, if a resubmission is intended, additional countries should be added.

Reviewer #2: This article studies the data available regarding COVID-19 infections and its fatality rate for Israel and Sweden. The aim of the study is to understand the effect of the implemented interventions and to foresee possible future scenarios.

It is an interesting study, but I have some comments on the descriptive analysis implemented.

1. The authors argue that they compare Israel and Sweden because they are countries of similar size. However, these two countries differ in many things that can affect on the evolution of the COVID19 contagion. As the author recognise, social distance is significantly different in both countries. However, there are many other substantial differences that can affect on the COVID19 dynamics such as the weather, the population density, the ability to telework, the general trust and the trust in government. It is important to discuss these substantial differences and its effect on the COVID19 dynamics.

2. The analysis would be much richer if they use data at some subnational level. It would be nice to see the analysis at the regional level. This will allow the authors also to control for some of the previous mentioned characteristics that can affect the COVI19 dynamics and that are different over the different regions in the country.

3. The linear regression that they do to estimate the correlation between confirmed cases and death should be improved. There are many characteristics that can affect in the relation of these two variables, such as the capacity of the health sector and the aging of the population. It would be very interesting if the authors implement the analysis at a regional level and departing from their initial regression, they include in a parsimonious way other control variables that can effect on the relation of these two variables. This would provide a better capacity to foresee the future scenarios depending on the regional characteristics.

4. In equation [1], the authors should replace R that refers to recovered people by another letter. It is misleading with R0

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

[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.

PONE-D-20-13386R1

The First Wave of COVID-19 in Israel - Initial Analysis of Publicly Available Data

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Last,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’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.

The manuscript requires a couple of further explanations, whereas the literature review should be extended.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 22 2020 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 plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ 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 academic 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'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Stefan Cristian Gherghina, PhD. Habil.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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 #3: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #4: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #5: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #3: Partly

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: Yes

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

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: Yes

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data 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 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 #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: Yes

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

PLOS ONE 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 #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: Yes

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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 #3: I read it with interest and enjoyed the clarity and brevity of your analysis. Nonetheless, I have decided not to accept immediately. While I found your analysis and literature to be interesting, the study would resonate more among our readers if it offered insights into the current literature by acknowledging these followings papers, which were focused on the Vietnam, lauded as the coronavirus fighting in the first wave. I believe that these measures as well as the study would have merits for the authors to enhance their current literature:

[a] Huynh, T. L. D. (2020). Does culture matter social distancing under the COVID-19 pandemic?. Safety Science, 104872.

[b] Huynh, T. L. D. (2020). “If You Wear a Mask, Then You Must Know How to Use It and Dispose of It Properly!”: A Survey Study in Vietnam. Review of Behavioral Economics, 7(2), 145-158.

[c] Huynh, T. L. D. (2020). The COVID-19 containment in Vietnam: What are we doing?. Journal of Global Health, 10(1).

[d] Huynh, T. L. (2020). The COVID-19 risk perception: A survey on socioeconomics and media attention. Econ. Bull, 40(1), 758-764.

[e] Huynh, T. L. D. (2020). Data for understanding the risk perception of COVID-19 from Vietnamese sample. Data in Brief, 105530.

After that, this manuscript is ready to be published.

Reviewer #4: Related to the 4th point by Reviewer 2, there are still a couple of places "R0" was written, for example p2, p12, p13. Please check and correct.

Reviewer #5: This article explores the evolution of Covid-19 in Israel compared to Greece, Italy and Sweden, and aims to understand the effect of the implemented interventions and to predict possible future scenarios. Even though it is mostly at descriptive level, concerning that every single piece of analysis adds to the information set of humanity, it might be valuable to publish it, once the necessary implementations are made.

It seems that the author successfully implemented most of the recommendations of the referees. He added two more countries, Greece and Italy, and two subnational analysis, one for Israel and one for Italy. Additionally, the graphs and the regression analyses are clearer and that`s why make more sense compared to the initial submission. Thus, I think the paper has improved a lot.

I would recommend couple of minor additions:

1. The “Current mortality rate” needs an explanation of what that current date is. Plus a “current number of confirmed cases per 100K” would be added to Table 1 to give a clearer picture.

2. The y-axis of Figure 2 is not stated. The author should add a title to that axis.

3. I do not think the author needs to spend 3-4 sentences per figure to explain everything in the Figures 3-4-5. They are already very clear. He can safely remove some. This will shorten the paper a little.

Once these minor additions are added, I think the paper will add to the literature and can be published.

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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.

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 #3: No

Reviewer #4: No

Reviewer #5: No

[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.

The First Wave of COVID-19 in Israel - Initial Analysis of Publicly Available Data

PONE-D-20-13386R2

Dear Dr. Last,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

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 onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Stefan Cristian Gherghina, PhD. Habil.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

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 #3: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #5: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #5: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #5: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data 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 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 #3: Yes

Reviewer #5: Yes

**********

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

PLOS ONE 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 #3: Yes

Reviewer #5: 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 #3: This revised version incorporated all my comments. Therefore, I am quite optimistic about the publishing opportunity from this manuscript.

Reviewer #5: This article aims to address the effect of the implemented interventions across various countries to predict possible future scenarios. The authors successfully implemented all of my recommendations and most of the others referees` too.

Well-done. Congratulations

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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.

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 #3: Yes: Toan Luu Duc Huynh

Reviewer #5: Yes: Orhan Erdem