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PONE-D-21-32760COVID-19 testing systems and their effectiveness in small, semi-isolated groups for sports eventsPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Kamo,

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.

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Asep K. Supriatna, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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“This research project includes other members from two private companies, Kao Corporation and NVIDIA Corporation, Japan. W.N. received financial support from the Kao Corporation until March 2020 in a context outside the submitted work. T.Y. and W.N. have received financial support from the Kao Corporation for a collaborative research project in the context of measures at mass-gathering events. T.Y. and W.N. have received financial support from the Yomiuri Giants, the Japan Professional Football League, and the Japan Professional Basketball League. M.K., M.M., T.Y. W.N, and S.I. have attended the New Coronavirus Countermeasures Liaison Council jointly established by the Nippon Professional Baseball Organization and the Japan Professional Football League as experts without any reward. T.Y. and W.N. are advisors to the Japan National Stadium. The findings and conclusions of this article are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not represent the official views of any institution.”

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Additional Editor Comments :

Dear Authors,

Please find the attached review reports.

Both the reviewers found that the manuscript is technically sound and well-written. However, they suggested for some minor corrections. Please do the correction by addressing the comments of the reviewers.

[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

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

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

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: No

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: Yes

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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: COVID-19 testing systems and their effectiveness in small, semi-isolated groups for sports events

This paper investigates the dynamics of COVID-19 within two groups of professional players. There are several comments that needs to be addressed before it has been published.

1. Every players has been tested every two weeks, where is the parameter in the model representing this fact?

2. Line 133-135, when the detected individuals have been confirmed they have been removed from the group. Why are that? Where does it represent in the model? Does it affect the population numbers?

3. They are two groups. Is there any interaction between these two groups and do the authors analyse differently for transmission dynamics of each group?

4. The authors can discuss the following papers

• An analysis of covid-19 transmission in indonesia and saudi arabia. Communication in Biomathematical Sciences. 2020

• Modelling the transmission dynamics of COVID-19 under limited resources. Communication in Mathematical Biology and Neurosciences. 2020.

Reviewer #2: In this paper, the authors have quantitatively assessed the effectiveness of systems for COVID-19 testing in small groups of sport teams that are semi-isolated from the general population by countermeasures against infection. They have assumed two types of group, and the dynamics of infection within each group has modeled by using a compartment model of infectious disease. I think that the paper entitled "COVID-19 testing systems and their effectiveness in small, semi-isolated groups for sports events" is well-organized and the significance of the main ideas are attractive. However, it needs some revisions from the point of authors and readers to improve the quality of the paper. After these major revisions, I suggest that this paper can be accepted to publish in "PLOS ONE".

My other comments are as follows:

1. The authors have used “Figure” in Pages 10, 12 etc. to write some details. Since the word “Figure” are usually use to show plots, it is better to use other title for this end.

2. Also, I consider the literature is not enough and that is why, I recommend the authors to refer to other recent works indexed in Web of Science, Scopus, Emerald, Cambrige, and of course MDPI Journals. For instance:

• Shokri, A., Mehdizadeh Khalsaraei, M., Molayi, M., Nonstandard Dynamically Consistent Numerical Methods for MSEIR Model, J. Appl. Comput. Mech., 8(1), (2022): 196-205.

• Mehdizadeh Khalsaraei, M., Shokri, A., Noeiaghdam, S., Molayi, M., Nonstandard Finite Difference Schemes for an SIR Epidemic Model, Mathematics, 9(23), (2021): 3082.

With many thanks and best regards.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: COVID.pdf

COVID-19 testing systems and their effectiveness in small, semi-isolated groups for sports events

PONE-D-21-32760R1

Dear Dr. Kamo,

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,

Asep K. Supriatna, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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: N/A

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: No

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: The authors have appropriately addressed all my concern and the paper can be published in its current form.

Reviewer #2: The reviewer believes that the paper entitled “COVID-19 testing systems and their effectiveness in small, semi-isolated groups for sports events” is well-organized and the significance of the main ideas are attractive. So, I suggest that this paper can be accepted to publish in "PLOS ONE".

**********

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