Transfer Alert

This paper was transferred from another journal. As a result, its full editorial history (including decision letters, peer reviews and author responses) may not be present.

PONE-D-22-18914Seroprevalence of anti-SARS-CoV-2 specific antibodies in vaccinated and vaccine naïve adult NigeriansPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Rahamon,

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 authors are requested to address the issues raised by one of the reviewer before consideration for further processing.==============================

Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 23 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,

Debdutta Bhattacharya

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at 

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and 

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

2. Thank you for submitting the above manuscript to PLOS ONE. During our internal evaluation of the manuscript, we found significant text overlap between your submission and previous work in the introduction. We would like to make you aware that copying extracts from previous publications, especially outside the methods section, word-for-word is unacceptable. In addition, the reproduction of text from published reports has implications for the copyright that may apply to the publications.

Please revise the manuscript to rephrase the duplicated text, cite your sources, and provide details as to how the current manuscript advances on previous work. Please note that further consideration is dependent on the submission of a manuscript that addresses these concerns about the overlap in text with published work.

We will carefully review your manuscript upon resubmission and further consideration of the manuscript is dependent on the text overlap being addressed in full. Please ensure that your revision is thorough as failure to address the concerns to our satisfaction may result in your submission not being considered further.

[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: Partly

**********

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

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

**********

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

**********

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: No

Reviewer #2: No

**********

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 study was done to assess the Sero-prevalence of anti-SARS-CoV-2 specific antibodies in vaccinated and vaccine naïve adults in Nigeria. The manuscript is clear and well organized. Understanding the immune responses induced by SARS-CoV-2 by naturally or after vaccination is important for better assessment of protection against SARS-CoV-2 as it is essential in achieving herd immunity. Data presented in this study can be employed to help policymakers make informed decisions regarding vaccination strategies. The limitation of this study is very small sample size.

Reviewer #2: Overall the manuscript has a flow similar to an academic thesis. There are a number of typos and sentences that may need to be restructured and made clearer for a reader. The author were also not clear on how data on vaccination was collected. RT-PCR testing can only confirm an active infection or a very recent infection with SARS-CoV-2 therefore previous infections cannot be confirmed without an RT-PCR test or an antigen based RDT. Participants with no vaccination history and with detected anti-SARS-CoV-2 specific antibodies may have been asymptomatically infected. Did authors use a questionnaire to collect data on any COVID-19 related symptoms for both vaccinated and unvaccinated participants? This is not clear.

Additionally, for vaccinations it is important to have data on time points for each dose as there are data of peak immune responses and when these responses are weaned off.

Below, areas in question for the comments or correction are illustrated with apostrophe

Introduction

1. 3rd paragraph, 4th line: In this regard, Nigeria aimed to vaccin'ate' 40% of its over 200 million people

2. 3rd paragraph, 9th line: 'population) are fully vaccinated'. Include what full vaccination means, two, three or four doses?

3. 4th paragraph, 4th line: It is however important to determine the antibody responses to vaccinated and unvaccinated persons in 'order' to determine possibility of previous SARS-CoV-2 exposure or protection

4. 4th paragraph, 7th line : 'S and N proteins of SARS-CoV-2', kindly include full meanings of N and S proteins

Methodology/Materials and Methods

1. Not clear how selection of participant was done

2. How did the authors get details of the vaccinations received by enrolled participants?

3. How did authors verify previous RT-PCR tests done by participants for COVID-19

4. Consider rephrasing sentence to make it clearer if authors tested participants for SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR: Participants with past SARS-CoV-2 infection history and those without were those confirmed positive or otherwise, by real-time reverse-transcriptase polymerase-chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay on nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swab specimens following the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline.

Results

1. Authors did not present data on the period between each vaccination (days? Weeks?), this may explain the statement: Unexpectedly, 23.1% and 21.4% of the participants who have had first and second doses respectively, had no protective antibody to SARS-CoV-2 and The only participant who has had the booster dose was seronegative

Discussion

1. 2nd paragraph, line 5: Consider rephrasing the sentence as number of individuals tested should not be equal to the population of a country. There are guidelines on COVID-19 testing based on symptoms and contact tracing.

2. 3rd paragraph: Consider providing information of the Nigerian situation of molecular diagnostic testing. The testing is free for the community testing approach and only travelers are charges. Molecular testing capacity in Nigeria has expanded significantly across the country and its no longer limited to reference laboratories

**********

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.

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

**********

[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.

Seroprevalence of anti-SARS-CoV-2 specific antibodies in vaccinated and vaccine naïve adult Nigerians

PONE-D-22-18914R1

Dear Dr. Rahamon,

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,

Debdutta Bhattacharya

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

**********

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: 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 #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: The authors have adequately addressed the weaknesses identified earlier and the manuscript is much improved as a result.

**********

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: No

**********