Infection prevention and control compliance among exposed healthcare workers in COVID-19 treatment centers in Ghana: A descriptive cross-sectional study

Mary Eyram Ashinyo; Stephen Dajaan Dubik; Vida Duti; Kingsley Ebenezer Amegah; Anthony Ashinyo; Brian Adu Asare; Angela Ama Ackon; Samuel Kaba Akoriyea; Patrick Kuma-Aboagye

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0248282

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionSeptember 23, 2020
1 Feb 2021 Decision Letter - Wen-Jun Tu, Editor PONE-D-20-29930 Infection Prevention and Control Compliance among Healthcare Workers in COVID-19 Treatment Centers in Ghana: A Descriptive Cross-sectional Study PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Ashinyo, 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 Mar 18 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. 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, Wen-Jun Tu Academic Editor PLOS ONE 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 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 2. Thank you for stating in the text of your manuscript "The study was part of a large study titled “Exposure risk Assessment: A survey among frontline healthcare workers in designated COVID-19 treatment centers”, which was approved by the Ghana Health Service Ethics Review Committee. Written informed consent was obtained from all study participants.". Please also add this information to your ethics statement in the online submission form. 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. 4. We noted in your submission details that a portion of your manuscript may have been presented or published elsewhere. ("Yes, It does not constitute a dual publication because the pending manuscripts exposure level of healthcare workers to the COVID-19 virus while the current manuscripts went ahead to measured IPC compliance among healthcare workers who were exposed to a COVID-19 patients.) Please clarify whether this conference proceeding or publication was peer-reviewed and formally published. If this work was previously peer-reviewed and published, in the cover letter please provide the reason that this work does not constitute dual publication and should be included in the current manuscript. 5. Please ensure that you refer to Figure 3 in your text as, if accepted, production will need this reference to link the reader to the figure. 6. We note you have included tables to which you do not refer in the text of your manuscript. Please ensure that you refer to Tables 3 and 4 in your text; if accepted, production will need this reference to link the reader to the Table. 7. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. [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 ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 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 ****** 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 ****** 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 manuscript contains interesting and useful data about Covid-19 infection prevention and control compliance among healthcare workers in Ghana. Minor Revision is required: - Lines 96-98: you wrote "The sample size was calculated using the Cochran formula at a 95% confidence interval, an assumed exposure level of 50%, and a 5% margin of error." Please quote the source, and include it in the References. If the Cochran formula is not too long,include it as well. - Line 117: "occasionally" You forgot to close the quotation marks. - Lines 306-307: "Maliszewska M, Mattoo A, Van Der Mensbrugghe D. The potential impact of COVID-19 on GDP and trade: A preliminary assessment" Please include the year of the publication Thank you. ****** 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: Yes:** Giovanni Vinti [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.0248282.r001
Revision 1
10 Feb 2021 Author Response To PLOS ONE Academic Editor (Wen-Jun Tu) From the corresponding author (Dr. Mary Eyram Ashinyo) First of all, We would like to express my sincere gratitude to you for devoting part of your schedules for our manuscript and for the valuable comments. We also express our profound gratitude to the reviewers for devoting their golden time to review this manuscript. Below are our point by point responses to the comments raised during the review process. 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 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 1: we accept this comment and we have made changes to reflect PLOS ONE style requirements 2. Thank you for stating in the text of your manuscript "The study was part of a large study titled “Exposure risk Assessment: A survey among frontline healthcare workers in designated COVID-19 treatment centers”, which was approved by the Ghana Health Service Ethics Review Committee. Written informed consent was obtained from all study participants.". Please also add this information to your ethics statement in the online submission form. Response 2: We accept this comment and we have incorporated in the online submission form 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. Response 3: We accept this comment and we have incorporated the survey questionnaire as additional file “S1 File” 4. We noted in your submission details that a portion of your manuscript may have been presented or published elsewhere. ("Yes, It does not constitute a dual publication because the pending manuscripts exposure level of healthcare workers to the COVID-19 virus while the current manuscripts went ahead to measured IPC compliance among healthcare workers who were exposed to a COVID-19 patients.) Please clarify whether this conference proceeding or publication was peer-reviewed and formally published. If this work was previously peer-reviewed and published, in the cover letter please provide the reason that this work does not constitute dual publication and should be included in the current manuscript. Response 4: We have provided the reasons for which this manuscript should not be considered as a dual publication in the cover letter. We have also included the related manuscript in this current manuscript. 5. Please ensure that you refer to Figure 3 in your text as, if accepted, production will need this reference to link the reader to the figure. Response 5: We accept this comment and figure 3 have been cited appropriately in the text 6. We note you have included tables to which you do not refer in the text of your manuscript. Please ensure that you refer to Tables 3 and 4 in your text; if accepted, production will need this reference to link the reader to the Table. Response 6: We accept this comment and Table 3 and 4 have been cited accordingly in the text. 7. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. Response 7: We accept this comment. Captions for supporting files have been updated and cited accordingly Lines 96-98: you wrote "The sample size was calculated using the Cochran formula at a 95% confidence interval, an assumed exposure level of 50%, and a 5% margin of error." Please quote the source, and include it in the References. If the Cochran formula is not too long, include it as well. Response 8 : We accept this comment and we have reference it appropriately. We have also included the Cochran formula. - Line 117: "occasionally" You forgot to close the quotation marks. Response 9: We accept this comment and quotation mark have been added accordingly - Lines 306-307: "Maliszewska M, Mattoo A, Van Der Mensbrugghe D. The potential impact of COVID-19 on GDP and trade: A preliminary assessment" Please include the year of the publication Response 10: The year of publication have been incorporated appropriately. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248282.r002
16 Feb 2021 Decision Letter - Wen-Jun Tu, Editor PONE-D-20-29930R1 Infection prevention and control compliance among exposed healthcare workers in COVID-19 treatment centers in Ghana: a descriptive cross-sectional study PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Ashinyo, 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 Apr 02 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. 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, Wen-Jun Tu Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (if provided): 1. In order to provide a more complete information to our readers on the topic, we would like to emphasize the importance to cross referencing very recent material on the same topic published in "PLoS ONE ". Therefore, it would be highly appreciated if you would check the contents published in the last two years of "PLoS ONE" (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/) and add all material relevant to your article to the reference list. 2. Add “Clinical Features and Short-term Outcomes of 102 Patients with Corona Virus Disease 2019 in Wuhan, China. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 71(15):748-755” in the revision text。 3. The grammar needs to be edited throughout. [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) ******** 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 ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: 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 ****** 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 ****** 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: Lines 78-80: Please, mention Covid-19 vaccines as well. For example, here you can find some clues: - Matrajt et al., 2021. Vaccine optimization for COVID-19: Who to vaccinate first? Science Advances Vol. 7, no. 6, eabf1374. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abf1374 Line 93: “formula [12];” and “with the following parameters;” You should use “:” instead of “;”. Lines 258-169: I did not understand how you obtained 23.2% for “PPE use total”. Could you please recheck it and clarify it in the text? Because it seems very low, compared to the other individual values you showed, and even checking Supporting information – S1 file and S1 table, it is not clear to me how you got that value. Therefore, a better explanation would be needed. ****** 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: Yes:** Giovanni Vinti [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.0248282.r003
Revision 2
19 Feb 2021 Author Response 1. In order to provide a more complete information to our readers on the topic, we would like to emphasize the importance to cross referencing very recent material on the same topic published in "PLoS ONE ". Therefore, it would be highly appreciated if you would check the contents published in the last two years of "PLoS ONE" (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/) and add all material relevant to your article to the reference list. We accept this recommendation, but we are unable to add references that cannot be cited in the text. We have however, added articles published in PLOS ONE which are citable in our work. References 9, 11, 13, 32, 34 and 36 2. Add “Clinical Features and Short-term Outcomes of 102 Patients with Corona Virus Disease 2019 in Wuhan, China. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 71(15):748-755” in the revision text。 We accept this recommendation and we have cited it in the manuscript, reference 6 3. The grammar needs to be edited throughout. The manuscript have undergone grammar editing Reviewer #1: Lines 78-80: Please, mention Covid-19 vaccines as well. For example, here you can find some clues: - Matrajt et al., 2021. Vaccine optimization for COVID-19: Who to vaccinate first? Science Advances Vol. 7, no. 6, eabf1374. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abf1374 We accept this comment and we have incorporated it accordingly. Reference 16; lines 83-84 Line 93: “formula [12];” and “with the following parameters;” You should use “:” instead of “;”. we have modified it to suit this comment, but we rather used “at” 95% confidence interval (1.96) Lines 258-169: I did not understand how you obtained 23.2% for “PPE use total”. Could you please recheck it and clarify it in the text? Because it seems very low, compared to the other individual values you showed, and even checking Supporting information – S1 file and S1 table, it is not clear to me how you got that value. Therefore, a better explanation would be needed. Thank you very much for this important comment. We realized that there was a mistake in recoding some of the variables into compliant and non-compliant. This has been rectify accordingly. How compliant and non-compliant was measure have been explained in Table 1 and 2. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to reviewers.docx.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248282.r004
24 Feb 2021 Decision Letter - Wen-Jun Tu, Editor Infection prevention and control compliance among exposed healthcare workers in COVID-19 treatment centers in Ghana: a descriptive cross-sectional study PONE-D-20-29930R2 Dear Dr. Ashinyo, 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, Wen-Jun Tu Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248282.r005
Formally Accepted
26 Feb 2021 Acceptance Letter - Wen-Jun Tu, Editor PONE-D-20-29930R2 Infection prevention and control compliance among exposed healthcare workers in COVID-19 treatment centers in Ghana: a descriptive cross-sectional study Dear Dr. Ashinyo: 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. Wen-Jun Tu Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248282.r006

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