PONE-D-23-01947The level of health anxiety before and during the COVID-19 pandemicPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Norbye,

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Additional Editor Comments:

The article is interesting and may provide important information for public health interventions at local level, but I suggest to compare these results with other experiences that consider aside COVID 19, other cofactors associated to anxiety during the pandemic, especially in European continent (see doi: 10.3390/ijerph191911929). These issues were not included in the analysis but they must be, at least, discussed.

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Reviewers' comments:

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: I Don't Know

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: Thank you for the opportunity to review “The level of health anxiety before and during the COVID-19 pandemic”. In the present study, authors investigated the levels of health anxiety before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in an adult, working population in Norway. They didn't observe any significant alteration in health anxiety scores between the pre-pandemic period and the COVID-19 pandemic period. This paper is well written. I have only minor change to further improve the quality of this paper.

1) In the introduction, I suggest expanding the topic of HA in relation to COVID-19 with studies on different populations, as this is later discussed as a limitation of the research

2) I suggest specifying the month of the period referred to in 2019 to understand how broad this period is and to subsequently evaluate the limits of the temporal ranges of the periods under examination.

3) I would suggest adding the implications of the study that are missing.

4) I suggest adding in limits paragraph that many variables that may influence health anxiety during the pandemic period were not considered, such as the risk of contracting or having contracted the virus, or having family members who were ill with Covid-19

Reviewer #2: The manuscript is very interesting and well-written, and the topic is very relevant.

However, it is my belief that the paragraph “Statistical analysis” in the section “Material and Methods” should be clearer, with a more in-depth explanation.

The authors wrote that there were few participants with two or more measurements (n=353), but it is not specified if this number is representative of the population considered in the study.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Benedetta Barchielli

Reviewer #2: No

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The level of health anxiety before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

PONE-D-23-01947R1

Dear Authors,

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Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments: