PONE-D-22-28266Factors associated with mortality in patients hospitalized for COVID-19 admitted to a tertiary hospital in Lambayeque, PeruPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Aguirre,

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PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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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

Reviewer #3: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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: I am submitting my comments in reference to the manuscript “Factors associated with mortality in patients hospitalized for COVID-19 admitted to a tertiary hospital in Lambayeque, Peru”. After going through the manuscript I found.

1.) The data presented is very much relevant to the scientific community.

2.) The manuscript has many typing mistakes and errors in sentence formation eg. Line 160 Abbreviation is ARDS but its expansion is Severe Respiratory Distress Syndrome.

3.) Many others are there which cannot be elaborated here.

It is advised to get the manuscript checked by an expert for English correction and resubmit.

Reviewer #2: I suggest that the title include that the study was carried out in the first wave in order to differentiate it from future studies that determine the characteristics found in the second, third and fourth waves, since characteristics such as morbidity and mortality could be different.

Reviewer #3: This is a retrospective cohort study and clinical records from a level 3 hospital are analyzed.

A great limitation that I can perceive is that they only add the variables of sepsis and hypertension (in a brief way) compared to studies that were previously published. In the same way, they do not add a sample size calculation or a multivariate analysis.

I will comment according to the line number in the pdf.

Line 45. mention the date for this information

Line 63. What new information would this study be providing?

Line 76. Didn't they sample? there are previous studies that they mentioned and they can base their sample size calculation on those. Even the aforementioned study carried out in a public hospital in the city of Tacna calculates statistical power for its realization.

Line 88. Why don't they mention the sepsis criteria they are using? since in the results they mention a complete paragraph to the resolution of said variable.

Line 100. Why not perform a multivariate analysis? the result of arterial hypertension is probably diminished when adjusting according to age, other comorbidity and need for ICU

Line 106. Is there a registration number? please include the resolution of the ethics committee of this hospital in complementary files

Line 135. So, the results of 46 other patients?

Line 215. considered stratifying by age in order to assess arterial hypertension?

Line 239. It would be ideal if they could provide information on the size of the association in the results they are comparing.

Line 243. It is a hasty statement according to their results, keep in mind that their prevalence ratio has a limit of 1.01 to 2.09 and has a confidence interval of more than one point.

Line 256. Why do they make this statement? if in their results they mentioned that there are no statistically significant differences.

Line 275. There are multiple studies that assess age as a negative outcome factor, not only national ones.

Line 284. and Peru? The study previously published in the Peruvian journal of experimental medicine and public health also mentions some of its population parameters.

Line 324. There are previously published studies that evaluate the variables of this study, including some prospective cohorts with a larger sample size, with multivariate analysis. Here some examples.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0265089

https://pesquisa.bvsalud.org/global-literature-on-novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov/resource/zh/covidwho-1320619

https://researchonline.lshtm.ac.uk/id/eprint/4664503/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34292921/

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Alberto Guevara Tirado

Reviewer #3: No

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Factors associated with mortality in patients hospitalized for COVID-19 admitted to a tertiary hospital in Lambayeque, Peru, during the first wave of the pandemic.

PONE-D-22-28266R1

Dear Dr. Aguirre,

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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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,

Kovy Arteaga-Livias

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

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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 #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 #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 #2: El autor ha subsanado las sugerencias planteadas por el revisor, se sugiere la publicacion del articulo

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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: Alberto Guevara Tirado

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