PONE-D-21-08875

Competing Health Risks Associated with the COVID-19 Pandemic and Response: A Scoping Review

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr Baral,

My deepest apologies for the delay in decision.

There has been a difficulty in recruiting editors in the past period. In my experience this has been across the board and not related to the substance of your submission.

I have had a reviewer submit their review and have reviewed it myself as well. Wanting to move forward I will accept publication with one reviewer (after you kindly revisit the text with the reviewers).

I apologize again for the delay.

Best, Tammam Aloudat

Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 05 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:

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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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Tammam Aloudat

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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2. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

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7. We note the search of the relevant literature is limited to searches on PubMed. We do not feel that this constitutes a search that is comprehensive enough to collect all relevant evidence available from the literature, and as a result, we have concerns about the strength of the conclusions drawn from the pool of studies included in your synthesis. Therefore, please extend your search to include other relevant databases and include any additional papers in your review, if applicable. 

8. In your methods section, please report the inclusion and exclusion criteria used in your review.

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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

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

Reviewer #1: N/A

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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

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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

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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: 1. Line 133 and 134 do not state clearly the period that the authors concentrated in their search for published literature and preprints. Just stating “through October 31st” is not enough and is, in fact, ambiguous

2. In lines 182 and 183, the authors make a statement about the decrease in dispensing of pre-exposure prophylaxis claiming it might be due to reduced sexual activity, this statement should probably be referenced or removed entirely with the authors sticking to the referenced materials since this is not the discussion section of the paper

3. It will also be good if the use some actual values from the quoted sources to show the decrease number of persons being tested and also accessing pre-exposure prophylaxis

4. Concerning lines 225 and 226, which period of the year are the authors referring to? Do they mean the whole of 2020? Nigeria, for instance, had an overall increase in TB case finding in 2020 compared to previous years. The authors should look at the statement and consider rephrasing it to reflect the period in 2020 they were referring to.

5. The opening statements of the discussion seems like something that would have fitted well as part of the background for this study. It sounds like a more catchy way of introducing this study.

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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.

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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: Okoro Chika Augustus

[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.

PONE-D-21-08875R1Competing Health Risks Associated with the COVID-19 Pandemic and Early Response: A Scoping ReviewPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Baral,

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.

Thanks a lot for properly addressing the concerns of the reviewers in the first round of revision. However, additional important and relevant points were raised by the reviewer #2 in this round of peer review. Kindly provide a detailed point-by-point responses to these concerns.

Please note that PLOS ONE will consider scoping reviews for publication after peer review if the manuscript meets the guidelines outlined in: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-systematic-reviews-and-meta-analyses

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jul 18 2022 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: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Malik Sallam, M.D., Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

[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: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: N/A

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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: Yes

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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: This paper has been properly written. All the previous concerns i had, especially in the presentation of the results were addressed by the authors.

Reviewer #2: Abstract

-It is very confusing the figures got from their literature search when mentioned. 1604 published papers and 205 preprints met inclusion criteria, but only 132 and 21 were selected, respectively. They have to replace the verb “including” by “selecting”.

Introduction

-References are not properly used in some instances. Reference [2] is not related to Public Health responses but to estimating the success of HIV care in key population.

-Lines 123-124. Delete “rather than systematic review”. If they want to discuss this point, relocate it in Discussion section.

-Methods

-Line 130. The other reviewer has already pointed that this sentence is confusing or trifling. In my opinion, they should merge the first sentence and the following one, or simply delete the first one.

-Line 131. They must enter the MeSH acronym the first time it was used in the text, as they did it in Abstract.

-There is a contradictory information regarding period of inclusion. In Abstract, the period cited ranged from January 1st to October 31st, 2020, whereas in Methods (line 144) the period started two months earlier (November 2019).

-Paragraph from line 140 to 145. They must merge inclusion criteria and then, cite the exclusion criterion (this appears in the middle of the paragraph now, line 142).

Results

-I have missed a summary table or a general summary of all the findings.

-There is a huge difference between the number of articles retrieved and that finally selected, so another exclusion criteria besides non-English language may have been used. They should specify why they discarded so many articles.

-Line 162. According to Table 1, the figures given for articles retrieved and selected for SRH is not correct (13/166). Table 1 shows 19 papers included out of a total of 183.

-The way of citation along the text is not consistent. For instance, the bracket including references 13 and 14 must be placed before the full stop (line 172). The same for reference [18] in line 178, [16] in line 186, [14] and [27] in line 189, etc. Citations are sometimes after, sometimes before full stops.

-Line 177. 820 out of 1254 is more than a half, so they must write it in that way [more than a half reported being unable…].

-Line 190. People who use drugs must be specified that these are injected (intravenous drug users).

-Lines 205-206. They must specify the key population of this study.

-Line 213. The WHO goal to finish the TB pandemic must be referenced with the corresponding citation.

-lines 241 and 242. The sentence referring to losses of jobs should be related to TB. Otherwise, it is not consistent there.

-Lines 324 and 325. They must replace each citation after a country with the citation at the end of the sentence, as they already did before in the previous paragraphs.

-Line 130. I cannot find the relationship between reference 130 and the impact of school closures in children´s nutrition. Is this reference correctly used?

-line 357. Replace “less than five years” by “younger than five years”.

-Lines 359 to 364. They have to insert a citation related to this statement, before writing about maternal mortality.

-Lines 383 and 384. The second part of the sentence (after comma) doesn´t have any reference. Is the reference [136] also suitable? In that case, this reference must be placed at the end of the sentence.

-References

Date of access to webpages must be included at the end of citation (i.e., [9], [138], [145], [146], [160], and so on).

[52], [62]. Pages are missing.

[11]. It is not properly a reference, but a product, a software, without referring to any author. Remove this reference and take the information to the text between brackets. The same as EndNote, reference [12].

[145]. It is not exactly correct how this reference is depicted. Is it a link to a webpage? Must indicate the page and date of access.

-Table 1. I am not sure of “pulled” was the most accurate term. I would rather use “retrieved”. In addition, authors must add an extra column to depict the total amount of each category (included, commentaries, excluded, etc.) and risk condition (HIV, malaria, etc), both published and preprints literature.

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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: Yes: Okoro Chika Augustus

Reviewer #2: No

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[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.

Competing Health Risks Associated with the COVID-19 Pandemic and Early Response: A Scoping Review

PONE-D-21-08875R2

Dear Dr. Baral,

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,

Malik Sallam, M.D., Ph.D.

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 #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 #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #2: N/A

**********

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 #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 #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 #2: Thank you for addressing all my suggestions and amending the mistakes found in the first round. I agree with the publication of this manuscript as the current reviewed version.

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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 #2: Yes: González-Domenech, CM

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