PONE-D-20-21265

Community Interventions in Low- and Middle- Income Countries to Inform COVID-19 Control Implementation Decisions in Kenya: A Rapid Systematic Review

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Leila H Abdullahi,

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PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Dear authors,

follow reviewer suggestions to improve your article

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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: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: No

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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: No

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: 1. This manuscript conducted a review on Community Interventions in Low- and Middle- Income Countries to Inform COVID-19 Control Implementation Decisions based on literature of SARS and influenza. The topic of this paper fall within the scope of the journal. However, since largist review of evidence had demonstrated that distancing and masks cut COVID-19 risk, the scientific value is limited and of little significance for conducting a review on community interventions to Inform COVID-19 control implementation decisions, especially based on literature of SARS and influenza.

2. The authors need to be more cautious to draw a conclusion. The authors mentioned in the Abstract that:

“The evidence confirms the use of face masks, good hand hygiene and social distancing as community intervention that are effective to control the spread of Covid-19 in LMIC.”

However，from the existing evidence (results) of this paper, we can only conclude that the use of masks, good hand hygiene and social distance and other community intervention measures are effective for the control of SARS and influenza. Although covid-19, SARS and influenza are all respiratory infectious diseases, their infectivity is different. It is not appropriate to infer from covid-19 effective community interventions for SARS and influenza.

3. Some statements in this paper are lack of data/reference support. For example, page 8, the authors need to provide data or references to support the following statement “Community-wide face masking has been shown to control the incidence of COVID-19 in Hong Kong Special Administration region compared to other countries”.

4. General scientific writing should be improved throughout the manuscript. For example, page 11, the authors mentioned “Despite the mitigation implementation, there is still a rise in the number of cases per day, as per the daily Kenyan Government briefing on the status of the situation.” The authors should point out the time point this refers to.

Reviewer #2: This is a study conducted as systematic review on community intervention on corona virus 2019, taking a cue on how similar virus spread were controlled .

The study is technically sound and elaborate enough to bring a reduction in the spread of the disease if it's recommendations are implemented.

The study design is just on point, however the following minor comments should be considered:

Fig 7 and 8 , i.e. on innovative hand washing and social distancing cannot be fully traced by the link provided. Only the grid of the small girl can be found by the link. So make the appropriate references on that and provide a full link to all the pictures in the work.

The authors conducted a subgroup analysis based on the type of viruses the previous works that were used for the Meta analysis. However in filling the prisma guidelines in the supplementary section, the authors said such was not applicable to this study. Could the authors explain to potential readers why such is not applicable?

The author will need to tell readers why a statistical test for bias wasn't possible. Also a sensitivity analysis would be necessary to inform the scientific community that, even if a bias test wasn't possible, but the reported pooled effect were not influence by non precise studies in the analysis

The authors reported " LMIC countries" in various sections of the main manuscript. It should just be written as LMIC, since the "C" ,in the acronym stands in for countries.

An excel file of the minimum data used in the analysis should be included in the supplementary section.

It should be accepted for publication with minor correction

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: JULIUS ABESIG

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Community Interventions in Low- and Middle- Income Countries to Inform COVID-19 Control Implementation Decisions in Kenya: A Rapid Systematic Review

PONE-D-20-21265R1

Dear Dr. Leila H Abdullahi

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.

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Kind regards,

Francesco Di Gennaro

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Dear Authors congratulations

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 #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: 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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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 #1: Yes

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 #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: This was a revision of an original submission. The authors have addressed all the issues i raised. I have no other comments to the authors. The paper falls in line with the journal scope. it should be accepted for publication .

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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 #1: No

Reviewer #2: No