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PONE-D-22-19013An update on oral clinical courses among patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection: A clinical follow-up (a prospective prevalent cohort) studyPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Gebretsadik,

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. Please clarify the inclusion criteria.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Etsuro Ito

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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2. We note you have included a table to which you do not refer in the text of your manuscript. Please ensure that you refer to Tables 1 and 2 in your text; if accepted, production will need this reference to link the reader to the Table.

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: 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: 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

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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: Line 55: As a recommendation, the authors can comment on the most recent influenza pandemic of 2009, which occurred 10 years before the new SARS-Cov-2 pandemic. In the introduction, the pandemic of more than 100 years ago (1918) is very well cited.

Line 83: At the end of the line, modify the citation (Xu et al., 2020), since the references are only numerical.

Line 107: Do not describe the objective as it is written in this section, because it is very well justified in line 112.

Line 127: It is essential to first propose the inclusion criteria. Identify the age ranges that can be included. There is a calculation to obtain the sample of the study population, it was random, it was stratified. It is a prospective study, it is very important to know how these parameters were made. If these methodologies were not considered in the project, it can be justified by writing that they included 55 patients on a certain date. As an example: from February 1, 2022 to March 1, 2022 (on the date that was the study protocol), 55 patients (36 men and 19 women) were included, in the format the age is asked, as a recommendation, they can calculate the ages of the men and women who participated. In the inclusion criteria, indicate what ages could be included in the study protocol.

Line 146: It is not mentioned which variables were collected and how they would be measured, it is only limited to an Excel sheet (an attached document on the study parameters is presented), the study variables must be specified and how they will be measured in the section of data analysis. This section must include the different variables that would be studied and how they will be measured, as an example the variables that are reported in table 1 of line 180 and in table 2 of line 197.

Line 148: The objective does not mention which variables will be collected and how they will be measured, place it in the section of line 146.

Line 162: The results are well written and clearly presented, but it would make it much easier to set the inclusion criteria, which variables would be reported and how these variables would be measured.

Line 286: The greatest strength of the article is the conclusion.

I consider that the paper can be accepted under the condition that all the proposed corrections of form and substance are made.

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Reviewer #1: No

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An update on oral clinical courses among patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection: A clinical follow-up (a prospective prevalent cohort) study

PONE-D-22-19013R1

Dear Dr. Gebretsadik,

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,

Etsuro Ito

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

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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: The requested changes were made to the article, I consider that the content is relevant, so the manuscript should be published.

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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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