Pandemic catch-22: The role of mobility restrictions and institutional inequalities in halting the spread of COVID-19

Adnan M. S. Fakir; Tushar Bharati

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0253348

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJanuary 26, 2021
26 Apr 2021 Decision Letter - Faisal Abbas, Editor PONE-D-21-02862 Pandemic Catch-22: The role of mobility restrictions and institutional inequalities in halting the spread of COVID-19 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Fakir, 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. Manuscript need minor revision. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jun 07 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. 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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: This is an original study which aims to estimate the causal effect of mobility and activity restrictions, and the growth rate of confirmed cases and deaths attributed to COVID-19. Overall, this is a well-designed, implemented, and written manuscript. The authors did not describe the mobility and activity restriction characteristics according to country. This is mandatory because several countries adopted a rigid restrictions, while other countries adopted a flexible restrictions. I recommend to move and include the sections of strength and limitations of study at the end of the discussion part. I strongly recommend the authors seek English language revision for this manuscript. I believe this would help clarify some of the expressions and sentences that are currently not appropriate or incomprehensible. Reviewer #2: The manuscript is a very interesting read. A comprehensive analysis is done regarding mobility restrictions and way these are impacting spread of this disease. I believe that a fairly reasonable job is done regarding the estimation and analysis of very diversified data sets. ****** 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. 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Revision 1
14 May 2021 Author Response Response to reviewer 1: Reviewer #1: This is an original study which aims to estimate the causal effect of mobility and activity restrictions, and the growth rate of confirmed cases and deaths attributed to COVID-19. Overall, this is a well-designed, implemented, and written manuscript. The authors did not describe the mobility and activity restriction characteristics according to country. This is mandatory because several countries adopted a rigid restrictions, while other countries adopted a flexible restrictions. Authors: Thank you for raising this pertinent point. We discuss this in section 2.1.2 when describing the Oxford Stringency Index. We agree that the variation in the stringency measures needs to be carefully addressed and made transparent. In response to the reviewer’s comment, we have now included a set of event graphs that report the variation in the Stringency Index by country over time. These graphs, one for each of the 127 countries in our sample, are collected under Figures S1 to S9 in the appendix (Supporting Information). We have also incorporated the following paragraph in section 2.1.2. “It is also important to note while some countries enacted rigid mobility and activity restrictions, other countries adopted more flexible measures. Further, these levels of flexibility/rigidity have changed within a country over time. OxCGRT integrates these fluctuations into their stringency index by categorizing each of the nine indicators into ordinal levels by the rigidity of the restriction. For example, school closures are categorized into ``0 - no measures; 1 - recommend closing or all schools open with alterations resulting in significant differences compared to non-Covid-19 operations; 2 - require closing (only some levels or categories, for eg. just high school, or just public schools); 3 - require closing all levels'' (Hale and Webster, 2020). The final stringency index is then a composite weighted index where higher values reflect the levels of rigidity of the restrictions. Please refer to Hale and Webster (2020) for details on the index's construction. Figures S1 to S9 in the appendix provide event graphs of the stringency index by country over time for all 127 countries in our sample. Values above 50 can be interpreted as the country undertaking relatively stricter measures.” Reviewer #1: I recommend to move and include the sections of strength and limitations of study at the end of the discussion part. Authors: Thank you for the recommendation. We agree that including the limitations of the study at the end of the discussion is the usual structure of manuscripts. But we believe it is better to discuss the limitations to the data we use for the empirical analysis in this study before we introduce the empirical strategy. This is because the discourse on the data limitations shape and connect to the empirical strategy we employ and elaborates the bounds within which the results should be interpreted. With the present structure, the reasons behind our non-conventional specification choices are also clear to the reader. We will request to be allowed to keep the limitations section at its current position within the manuscript. Reviewer #1: I strongly recommend the authors seek English language revision for this manuscript. I believe this would help clarify some of the expressions and sentences that are currently not appropriate or incomprehensible. Authors: Thank you for the recommendation. We have gone through the entire manuscript multiple times now. We have corrected grammatical errors and amended sentences to improve clarity. We also have had the manuscript professionally copy-edited. Response to reviewer 2: Reviewer #2: The manuscript is a very interesting read. A comprehensive analysis is done regarding mobility restrictions and way these are impacting spread of this disease. I believe that a fairly reasonable job is done regarding the estimation and analysis of very diversified data sets. Authors: We thank the reviewer for the encouraging remarks. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253348.r002
3 Jun 2021 Decision Letter - Faisal Abbas, Editor Pandemic Catch-22: The role of mobility restrictions and institutional inequalities in halting the spread of COVID-19 PONE-D-21-02862R1 Dear Dr. Fakir, 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, Faisal Abbas, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Accept. Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253348.r003
Formally Accepted
17 Jun 2021 Acceptance Letter - Faisal Abbas, Editor PONE-D-21-02862R1 Pandemic Catch-22: The role of mobility restrictions and institutional inequalities in halting the spread of COVID-19 Dear Dr. Fakir: 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. Faisal Abbas Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253348.r004

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