PONE-D-21-20950

Outcomes in a Rural Ugandan Neonatal Unit Before and During the Early COVID-19 Pandemic: a Retrospective Cohort Study

PLOS ONE

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PLOS ONE

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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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Title: Outcomes in a Rural Ugandan Neonatal Unit Before and During the Early COVID-19 Pandemic: a Retrospective Cohort Study (manuscript number: PONE-D-21-20950)

Review by Ermias Sisay Chanie /MSc in pediatrics and Child health Nursing)

Debre Tabor University, Debre Tabor, Ethiopia

Thanks for give an opportunity to plos one chief editors to reviewing this article. This research is important on reducing neonatal mortality and morbidity in worldwide in general and in study ara in particular, in the meantime it is one of the international concerns. African countries including Ugandan works to reduce the mortality of neonate through monitoring and evaluation the ‘’outcomes neonate in Neonatal Unit”.

Minor

1. General English: The review recommends the article be copyedited to improve language and grammar used

2. Check the table number frequency, percentage and p- value for each column

Major concern

Title

1. In my point of view the title better to modified based on your conclusion, since it focuses on the impact of COVID-19 in “maternal and newborn demand for, access to and quality of peripartum healthcare’’ etc.

2. Rural vs Neonatal Unit? I am not clear with it. I am not expected neonatal unit in rural area.

Introduction

1. In my view, better to focus on your objective, which mean the effect of COVID-19 on maternal health, or neonatal health or healthcare system in general

2. Try to show any attempting solution to reduce the burden of COVID-19 related to your objective in the study rea

3. The identified gaps before conducting the study? And the implication of the study to fill the appreciated gaps

Methods

1. Discuss about your study populations vs source population of the study participant clearly

2. your Inclusion criteria vs Exclusion criteria of the study participant clearly

3. Better to included data set in statical analysis and try to explore about descriptive statics that was used etc.…?

4. Adding about goodness of fit and model fitness?

Reviewer #2: Abstract is too long and should not exceed 300 words for The PLOS ONE. Please describe clearly the main objective of this study and summarize the most important results and their significance.

Introduction:

The overall aim of this study and whether that aim was achieved are missing.

Methods:

The role of the funding source should not be in the method section

The statistical analysis to compare the groups are missing or incorrect (proportion tests?)

Results:

Fig 1. It should clarify the term “outborn” and “inborn” in the legend

Table 2. the “+-“ should replace the points in all numbers. Same for the text across the manuscript

p-values should be added to the table. The statistical analysis should be described in the table.

Figure 2 legend should describe the sample size and the statistical analysis used. It should not repeat the results of the figure. It also should specify the term inborn and outborn.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Impact of the Early COVID-19 Pandemic on Outcomes in a Rural Ugandan Neonatal Unit: a Retrospective Cohort Study

PONE-D-21-20950R1

Dear Dr. Hedstrom,

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,

Robert Jeenchen Chen, MD, MPH

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: (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: 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.

Thank you very much indeed

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No