PONE-D-22-11889Cumulative incidence, prevalence, seroconversion, and associated factors for SARS-CoV-2 infection among healthcare workers of a University Hospital in Bogota, ColombiaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Valderrama,

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Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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"This study was funded by Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Hospital Universitario San Ignacio, and Fundación Bolívar Davivienda.

We are grateful to Dr Tiong Kit Tan and Prof Alain Townsend for technical discussion and for supplying the HAT reagents for this study, and to the donors of the Townsend-Jeantet Prize Charitable Trust Charity No 1011770 for support."

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"This study was funded by Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Hospital Universitario San Ignacio, and Fundación Bolívar Davivienda.

We are grateful to Dr Tiong Kit Tan and Prof Alain Townsend for technical discussion and for supplying the HAT reagents for this study, and to the donors of the Townsend-Jeantet Prize Charitable Trust Charity No 1011770 for support."

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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: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: 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

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

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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: Authors have presented a manuscript entitled ´ Cumulative incidence, prevalence, seroconversion, and associated factors for SARS-CoV-2 infection among healthcare workers of a University Hospital in Bogota, Colombia ´ to be considered for publication in the journal Plos One.

The article has a very timely topic regarding the incidence and risk factors associated to SARS-CoV-2 infection among healthcare workers. However, the manuscript would benefit from a clearer design and dissemination of the results and conclusions. However, I have the following concerns about the manuscript, which should be addressed before publishing this work.

My main concerns are:

1. The authors present a legit conclusion, but the manuscript would benefit from a clear hypothesis. Particularly the authors are advised to address, what is the prevalence, incidence and likely epidemiological role of asymptomatic – either pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic – SARS-CoV-2 infections, particularly if nosocomially acquired, among the healthcare personnel in the University Hospital in Bogota. These results could be further compared to healthcare workers eg. in Sweden where very limited preventative measures were implemented. See Pimenoff et al. 2021 PLoS One. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0260453.

2. It is surprising to see weight associate to the risk of acquiring SARS-CoV-2 infection. However, this is likely a bias in the data as overweight is one of the risk factors for severe COVID-19 and thus overweight HCWs may be more willing to participate in SARS-CoV-2 infection screening than non-risk category HCWs. A systematic sensitivity analysis should be performed to identify if the dataset presented in this study is biased by selection of any severe COVID-19 disease related risk factors.

3. A figure of the prevalence data as a function of time would be a good way to visualize the data and related it to particular waves of the panemia and the dominant variant.

4. Manuscript text could have a bit more flow, revision of the text is advised.

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Reviewer #1: No

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Cumulative incidence, prevalence, seroconversion, and associated factors for SARS-CoV-2 infection among healthcare workers of a University Hospital in Bogotá, Colombia

PONE-D-22-11889R1

Dear Dr. Valderrama,

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,

Amitava Mukherjee, ME, 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 #1: 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

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

Reviewer #1: 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

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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

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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: (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

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