PONE-D-20-19085

Maternal factors and predictors of wearing face mask on children, in the prevention of COVID 19. A multicentre study

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Josephat Chinawa, 

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.

Please submit your revised manuscript by  10 September .  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,

Francesco Di Gennaro

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments:

Dear Authors,

Below the reviewer suggestions

Journal requirements:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at

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2. Please amend your current ethics statement to address the following concerns:  

a) Did participants provide their written or verbal informed consent to participate in this study?

b) If consent was verbal, please explain i) why written consent was not obtained, ii) how you documented participant consent, and iii) whether the ethics committees/IRB approved this consent procedure.

3. Please include additional information regarding the survey or questionnaire used in the study and ensure that you have provided sufficient details that others could replicate the analyses.

For instance, if you developed a questionnaire as part of this study and it is not under a copyright more restrictive than CC-BY, please include a copy, in both the original language and English, as Supporting Information. 

If the original language is written in non-Latin characters, for example Amharic, Chinese, or Korean, please use a file format that ensures these characters are visible.

4. Please state whether you validated the questionnaire prior to testing on study participants. Please provide details regarding the validation group within the methods section.

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Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized.

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7. Please include your tables as part of your main manuscript and remove the individual files.

Please note that supplementary tables should be uploaded as separate "supporting information" files

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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: Partly

Reviewer #2: No

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

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: I Don't Know

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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: No

Reviewer #2: No

**********

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: No

**********

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: Thank you for raising the important issue of children wearing a face mask and the maternal predictive factors. This is an important and very timely issues.

Authors have done a good analysis of literature but what is lacking is the policy guidelines in Nigeria. based on WHO or other recommendations- what has the government mandated and disseminated. this is not described. Most countries utilize the global guidance from WHO but contextualize it.

Authors claim that this study will establish the need to wear a mask. While the authors have quoted from the literature about the need to wear a mask, i don't think the analysis lends itself to convincing people on the need t wear a mask.

The question that authors are seeking to answer should be further clarified. Is it the proportion of women who have the knowledge that face mask is essential for children? You write- proportion of mothers who have knowledge of child wearing of face mask. Please describe in detail how you assess the knowledge and the perception.

In the statistical analysis - did you look for variation in young mothers by educational status and also for those above 35 by educational status? could be highly correlated. The age and education status Do you see the same predictive factors? It would have been interesting to see f the wearing of the masks by the mothers themselves also had the similar pattern.. Interesting to see that tertiary education of the father has the opposite effect on wearing a mask by the child. Could the authors explain why?

There is no study limitations mentioned. Please add. in addition- please strengthen the conclusion and what the authors would like to see change as a result of this study. Please add some recommendations for policy and programs

Reviewer #2: General comments.

The authors of this manuscript essentially conducted a KAP study on mothers regarding the wearing of facemask in their children. It was a timely multi-centre, cross-sectional descriptive study in a sub-Saharan African setting which is not spared by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, establishing the KAP on this important preventive strategy of the pandemic is relevant. However, there are some major and minor concerns about this manuscript.

Major concerns

1. Under the Abstract and title, the authors need to note these flaws: The title requires modification for clarity. It is not reflective of the content of the manuscript. The background did not provide the research gap to be filled. The study aim was not explicit enough (it was like a repetition of the study title). For methodology, pertinent elements like sample size, study instrument and how it was administered were missing. Reportage of the results should be improved. The conclusion is not in sync with the results

2. Introduction- The first sentence which reads- ‘Corona Virus infection (COVID 19) has now attained community infection and is now very common in families’- appears rather ambiguous. I think corona virus infection is not synonymous with COVID-19 (the latter is the disease caused by the former). Do the authors mean that the pandemic is now at the level of community transmission? Although the authors tried to highlight what is already known about the topic and the research question, the aim of the study as stated here (‘ascertaining the perception of mothers on the use of face mask in children in this COVID era’) is different from the aim as stated under the Abstract.

3. Methods- The authors revealed the study instrument here as structured self-administered questionnaires. A concise detail of the questionnaire items would have enlightened the reader. Would all the respondents have understood the items? An interviewer-administered questionnaire could have been a better approach.

4. Results- The ‘practice’ aspect of this study namely ‘the wearing of face mask in children’ was based on proxy-report and not observational. Thus, the information provided by these mothers on the proportion of their children who did wear face mask may not be reliable. This underscores the fact that an observational study of mother-child dyads would have been better. For instance, the authors reported that children aged 8 days to 1 year wore face masks. The practice is even contradictory to the reported WHO recommendation in children. The authors reported some socio-demographic variables as predictors of the practice of wearing face mask in children. Curiously, they were silent on the role of knowledge and perception. Maternal knowledge and perception ought to influence their practice of using face mask on their children

5. Discussion- The content and flow of this section should be improved. The authors did not highlight any limitations of the current study. The conclusion was not precise enough but was too concise to have conveyed the message of the study.

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6. 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

[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.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: REVIEW for PLOS ONE MS.docx

PONE-D-20-19085R1

Wearing of face mask by children and associated maternal factors; in the prevention of COVID 19: A multicentre study

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Chinawa,

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.

Please submit your revised manuscript by 10 October. 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,

Francesco Di Gennaro

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Dear authors,

follow reviewer suggestion you can improve your manuscript

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

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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

**********

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: Partly

**********

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

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: No

**********

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

**********

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: No

Reviewer #2: No

**********

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: Thank you for addressing previously raised concerns. The authors have done a great job of addressing most of the issues. few suggestions are listed below.

1. There needs to be a thorough copy edit because there are several typographical errors. For instance, warding off is written as wading off

2. Please add the word Nigeria in the title.

Wearing of face mask by children and associated maternal factors; in the prevention of 2 COVID 19: A multicentre study in Nigeria

3. There is a lot of controversy on the use of face masks by children, especially in a situation where decisions bothering on who should wear the mask and at what age, still remain unknown. This statement does not convey the full guidance issues by WHO and Unicef of “doing no harm” and they are recommending that there is no need for mask for children < 5 years of age. However, some countries may contextualize it to 2 or 3 years. The authors need to highlight the correct wearing of masks at the outset

https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/WHO-2019-nCoV-IPC_Masks-Children-2020.1

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

**********

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

[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.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: REVIEWERS COMMENTS FOR REVISED MS (PLoS ONE).docx

PONE-D-20-19085R2

Maternal perception of masking in children as a preventive strategy for COVID-19 in Nigeria: a multicentre study.

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Chinawa,

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.

Please submit your revised manuscript by 20 October 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,

Francesco Di Gennaro

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Dear authors follow minor comments of reviewers to improve your article

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

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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

**********

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: Partly

**********

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

**********

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: No

**********

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: A minor proportion of the children, 44.7% wore face 194 masks which were all home-made.

According to Table 1 this should be 43.5% 44.7% are females

230. Children less than 2 years may not 231 benefit from wearing face mask but may rather be in danger. –Please clarify this statement. I am assuming that you are suggesting that wearing a mask maybe more high-risk for them

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

**********

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

[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.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: SECOND REVIEW OF MANUSCRIPT- FOR PLoS.docx

PONE-D-20-19085R3

Maternal perception of masking in children as a preventive strategy for COVID-19 in Nigeria: a multicentre study.

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Chinawa,

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.

Please submit your revised manuscript by 10 November. 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,

Francesco Di Gennaro

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Dear Authors follow reviewer suggest (minor suggestions) to improve your manuscript

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

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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

**********

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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: Partly

**********

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

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: 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 #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: No

**********

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: Thank you for addressing the comments. Please clarify the following

Table 1 shows the wearing of face mask by the children. Minority (44.7%) of the mothers

193 perceived masking in children as an appropriate measure for the prevention of COVID-19. The

194 frequent reasons given by majority (55.3%) of the mothers for the inappropriateness of face

195 mask in children included perceived difficulty in breathing (38.5%) and the child’s readiness

196 to pull it off (29.3%)

In table1- 44.7 and 55.3 refers to gender - male and female. Please clarify if it is for mothers? the table is titles Child wearing a mask so its very confusing.

Reviewer #2: General comments:

Although the authors have progressively improved the quality of this manuscript by their revisions, I would urge them to be more painstaking in responding to the specific issues of concern previously raised. This will not only eliminate inconsistencies within the manuscript but also improve the lexicon of their written English.

Specific comments:

1. Abstract- In line 41, the repeated figure (64.2%) should be deleted.

2. In my previous reviews, I pointed out that the manuscript has grammar and syntax errors. I suggested an English editing to be done. However, it appears the authors have disregarded this suggestion. This is evident in some errors noted as follows: ‘was’ used instead of ‘were’ (Line 77), ‘is’ used instead of ‘are’ (Line 78), ‘In China’ instead of ‘in China’ (Line 90) and ‘intensified program’ used instead of ‘intensified programs’, etc. Furthermore, I guess the statement in line 145 should read ‘we did not focus on mother-child dyads while assessing maternal perception and the practice of wearing face masks, though…..’ In fact, this assertion throws up an inconsistency with lines 178-179 where the authors stated that a ‘Yes’ answer on wearing face mask was confirmed by their observation of masking in children during data collection. How could the authors not have focused on mother-child pairs in the study when they reported masking in both the mothers and their children? This again negates the study limitation in lines 350-351 which states ‘We did not evaluate the concordance of maternal perception of masking with actual wearing of face mask in their children.’ Let the authors correct this inconsistency

3. Finally, I urge the authors to subject the manuscript to English editing. I suggest they could use the ‘grammarly’ software if they cannot utilize the available English editing services

**********

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

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Maternal perception of masking in children as a preventive strategy for COVID-19 in Nigeria: a multicentre study.

PONE-D-20-19085R4

Dear Dr. Chinawa,

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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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 #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: (No Response)

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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 #1: Please correct the following sentence.

Do your child wear a face mask

It should read - Does your child wear a mask

Reviewer #2: Thank you for addressing the concerns I raised about your manuscript. During the galley proof, you can further improve the lexicon

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Samuel Uwaezuoke