Knowledge and practice of clients on preventive measures of COVID-19 pandemic among governmental health facilities in South Wollo, Ethiopia: A facility-based cross-sectional study

Reta Dewau; Tefera Chane Mekonnen; Sisay Eshete Tadesse; Amare Muche; Getahun Gebre Bogale; Erkihun Tadesse Amsalu

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0247639

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJuly 28, 2020
9 Dec 2020 Decision Letter - Animesh Biswas, Editor PONE-D-20-23137 Knowledge and Practices of Clients on preventive measures of COVID-19 Pandemic among Governmental health facilities in South Wollo, Ethiopia: A Facility-based Cross-Sectional study PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Tadesse, 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. I request you to review the comments and suggestions given by the reviewers and come up with a revised version incorporating those line by line. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 23 2021 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. 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If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please move it to the Methods section and delete it from any other section. Please ensure that your ethics statement is included in your manuscript, as the ethics statement entered into the online submission form will not be published alongside your manuscript. 4. Please include a separate caption for each figure in your manuscript. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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 ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: I Don't Know ****** 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 ****** 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 ****** 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: The sampling method not clear in relation to facility selection and randomization. Number of sample is relatively low to be representing. Use of old census for the catchment area for sample calculation without estimation of expected growth affects the result generalization. selection biase due to facility base sampling does not support Community base result. Reviewer #2: Currently Covid-19 related articles have become one of the most popular topics. Design of the study - cross-sectional. Statistical part written good, used statistical tests described, approved with the tables and graphs. There is some concern about sample size (82) and duration of the study. Is it enough for generalizing the result with that sample size, and why the duration only 9 days??? For that reason the question: Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? - answered Don't know. The article itself well written, English in submitted article is clear, understandable, article style used. ****** 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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247639.r001
Revision 1
18 Dec 2020 Author Response Response to reviewer Date: 16 December/2020 PONE-D-20-23137 Knowledge and Practices of Clients on preventive measures of COVID-19 Pandemic among Governmental health facilities in South Wollo, Ethiopia: A Facility-based Cross-Sectional study Erkihun Tadesse PLOS ONE Dear all, We would like to thanks for these constructive, building and improvable comments on this manuscript that would improve substance and content of the manuscript. We considered each comments and clarification questions of editors and reviewers on the manuscript thoroughly. Our point-by-point responses for each comment and questions are described in detailed on the following pages. Further, the details of changes were shown by highlighting in the revised manuscript file attached. Editor comments 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: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors affiliations.pdf Response: Thank you editor for the supportive comment. Our manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements. 2. We suggest you thoroughly copyedit your manuscript for language usage, spelling, and grammar. Response: Thank you very much editor for the supportive suggestions to improve our work for readability. We amended the language, spelling and grammar in the revised manuscript file shown by highlighting. 3. Your ethics statement should only appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please move it to the Methods section and delete it from any other section. Please ensure that your ethics statement is included in your manuscript, as the ethics statement entered into the online submission form will not be published alongside your manuscript. Response: Thank you very much editor for the supportive comments to improve our work. We take the ethics statement to the methods section and deleted it from the declaration section in the revised manuscript file shown by highlighting. 4. Please include a separate caption for each figure in your manuscript. Response: Thank you very much editor for the supportive comment and we included caption for figure 1 and figure 2 in the manuscript file as shown by highlighting. Reviewer 1 comments 1. The sampling methods not clear in relation to facility selection and randomization. Number of sample is relatively low to be representing. Use of old census for the catchment area for sample calculation without estimation of expected growth affects the result generalization. Selection bias due to facility base sampling does not support community base result. Response: Thank you reviewer for the constructive and supportive comments to improve our work for readability. We clarified the sampling methods in relation to sample size determination, facility selection and randomization in the revised manuscript file from line number 115-129. -“We calculated the sample size using score test for one sample proportion by STATA version 14 with the assumption that 50% of clients had good knowledge that scored above the mean, 5% level of significance (α), power 80% (β), and at least 16% of client’s knowledge improvement is expected after six months of the pandemic duration (December to May). Thus, the total calculated sample size was 83 clients.” -“We selected Dessie town purposively from south wollo zone since it is hotspot for the spread of the virus as speculated by the Ethiopian Public Health Research Institute and selected by the federal ministry of health of Ethiopia as the only treatment and screening center for COVID-19 during the early phase of the pandemic in the country. We selected 3 health facilities namely Dessie Referral hospital, Segno Gebeya health center, and Buanbuawuha health centers randomly using lottery method. Then, we proportionally allocated the sample size to each health facility based on the patient flow of the facilities. Finally, we selected 43 participants from Dessie referral hospital, 20 participants from Segnogebeya health center, and 20 participants from Buanbuawuha health center consecutively.” As a limitation of this study we considered small sample size in which the finding from the study may not be representative/ not enough for generalization. Since we conducted this study during the early phase of the pandemic in the country, Ethiopia where there is no evidence (study) about the level of knowledge and preventive practice of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country including our study area. Thus, we conducted this study within 9 days of data using 81 participants attending the selected health facilities to provide urgent evidence (feedback) to the concerned bodies to halt further progression of the pandemic by designing appropriate prevention and control strategies. Reviewer 2 comments -Statistical part written good, used statistical tests described, approved with the tables and graphs. There is some concern about sample size (81) and duration of the study. Is it enough for generalizing the result with that sample size, and why the duration only 9 days ??? For that reason the question: Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? - answered don’t know. The article itself well written, English in submitted article is clear, understandable, article style used. Response: Thank you reviewer for the constructive and supportive comments to improve our work for readability. As a limitation of this study we considered small sample size in which the finding from the study may not be representative/ not enough for generalization and described in the discussion section of the manuscript file. We conducted this study during the early phase of the pandemic in the country, Ethiopia where there is no evidence (study) about the level of knowledge and preventive practice of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country including our study area. In spite of this limitation, we conducted this study within 9 days of data using 81 participants attending the selected health facilities to provide urgent evidence (feedback) to the concerned bodies to halt further progression of the pandemic by designing appropriate prevention and control strategies. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to reviewer.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247639.r002
11 Feb 2021 Decision Letter - Animesh Biswas, Editor Knowledge and Practices of Clients on preventive measures of COVID-19 Pandemic among Governmental health facilities in South Wollo, Ethiopia: A Facility-based Cross-Sectional study PONE-D-20-23137R1 Dear Dr. Tadesse Amsalu, 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, Animesh Biswas, PhD, MPH, MSc, MBBS Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247639.r003
Formally Accepted
12 Feb 2021 Acceptance Letter - Animesh Biswas, Editor PONE-D-20-23137R1 Knowledge and Practice of clients on preventive measures of COVID-19 Pandemic among Governmental health facilities in South Wollo, Ethiopia: A Facility-based Cross-Sectional study Dear Dr. Tadesse Amsalu: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. 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. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Animesh Biswas Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247639.r004

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