PONE-D-21-27433Optimization of COVID-19 vaccination and the role of individuals with a high number of contacts: a model based approachPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. 33457670153,

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.

ACADEMIC EDITOR: The following major issues must be addressed: 

• Could you justify why the particular age group was picked for the model development?
• The authors only chose Brazil and Portugal. They are in different phases of vaccination. In sensing the full data, my first notice is that Brazil fitting into the unpredictable model is just 20.3 percent compared to Portugal. It would be amazing if the authors recognized that the vaccination stage is over 50% or more other than Brazil and Portugal.
• I have noticed some typos and grammatical issues, thus read the article carefully.

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Kind regards,

M. Shamim Kaiser, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Development - CNPq (grant numbers 302449/2019-1 FAS, 309617/2020-0 ACGA, 223

305291/2018-1 MAM), Bahia State Research Support Foundation (BOL0723/2017 AJAC) 224

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Ciência e Tecnologia/MEC (Portugal)"

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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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: Yes

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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: This manuscript is well written but needs correction of some important points before publication. Like in introduction need to add information from the below recent papers;

https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines9080864

https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines9050416

There is not enough methodological information in the abstract.

Present the methods section before the results and discussion.

Could you please justify the reasons why the specific age group was selected for the model development and what are the reasons for vaccination failure among that group.

Add more clarity around super spreaders group.

The strengths of the research are not clearly established.

Reviewer #2: The research ‘Optimization of COVID-19 vaccination and the role of individuals with a high number of contacts: a model based approach’ is interesting. It proposed a methodology to carefully analyze the current situation of Covid-19, considering the social contacts structure in a given population and its age distribution. Alongside, it deeply analyzed the vaccine efficacy, prioritizations of vaccination strategies, successful and equitable vaccination strategy and vaccine input methodology by fitting different hypothetical scenarios into a epidemiological model. Its not a big surprise that super-spreaders play the key role for transmission, infection, fatality as well as prevention of any contagious diseases like covid-19. But the way the authors use the data of super-spreaders in the model is a good one.

The authors have chosen only Brazil and Portugal as they are originated from these countries. These they are in different vaccination stages, with 20.3% and 64.75% of the population in Brazil and Portugal fully vaccinated, respectively. By sensing the whole study, my first observation is that the case of Brazil fitting in the model given unseemly results in compare with Portugal as Brazil has only 20.3%. Its troublesome to discuss future optimal vaccination campaigns for any community by model fitting only a small population like Brazil. It would be great if the authors considered another besides Brazil and Portugal where the vaccination stage is above 50% or more.

How does the authors deal with the uncertainties of the model. There are many considerations the authors considered to run the model. For example, reinfection proportion is negligible and that mixing is homogeneous, discarding heterogeneous effects in the population. Why and How?

How does the authors consider that 20% of the age group from 30 to 39 years of age are superspreaders, which amounts to 3.2% of the total population of Brazil and 2.5% of Portugal?

Different age groups (9 groups here) should have different behavioral pattern and it varies with locality and time. Why didn’t the authors use any coefficient or else to remove the uncertainties raised the by the said issues?

In a study I found that prioritizing adults aged 60+ years remained the best way to reduce mortality and YLL for R0 ≥ 1.3, but prioritizing adults aged 20 to 49 years was superior for R0 ≤ 1.2. Prioritizing adults aged 20 to 49 years minimized infections for all values of R0 investigated. How does this results connect with the results in this manuscript. If differ, why?

It would be good if the authors considered two factors more e.g. vaccines with imperfect transmission-blocking effects, incorporation of population seroprevalence and individual serological testing.

I found many works in the literature on approximately same topic. In such context, this can be considered a prototype work. But, the model extracted results offered herein this study provoked me to the favor of publishing this manuscript in Plos One. In my opinion, it needs a further review after a major revision where the authors address the above flaws.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Optimization of COVID-19 vaccination and the role of individuals with a high number of contacts: a model based approach

PONE-D-21-27433R1

Dear Dr. 33457670153,

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,

M. Shamim Kaiser, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Thank you for responding to all of the reviewers' concerns.

However, the paper contains a few mistakes. Please take your time reading this paper carefully.

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

**********

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: 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: Thanks for doing all the changes as suggested. The manuscript sounds technically good and well revised.

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