PONE-D-23-14983What is the impact of long-term COVID-19 on workers in healthcare settings? A rapid systematic review of current evidencePLOS ONE

Dear Dr. % LAST_NAME%,

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 submit your revised manuscript by Nov 30 2023 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,

Akaninyene Eseme Bernard Ubom, MBBS, MWACS, OMI Fellow

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 stating the following in the Funding Section of your manuscript:

“COVID Scottish Funding Council Research Funding and the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Paramedic Practice at Robert Gordon University.”

We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form.

Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows:

“The authors received no specific funding for this work”

Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

3. In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability.

Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized.

Important: If there are ethical or legal restrictions to sharing your data publicly, please explain these restrictions in detail. Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access.

We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter.

[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

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

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: No

Reviewer #3: 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: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

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: 1. ABSTRACT: The abstract should be structured into Background, Objective, Methods, Results and Conclusion.

*Include a brief background for the study

*Discussion is usually not part of abstract

*The result section of the abstract should be shortened /summarized to highlight only the major and important findings.

2. Line 43-- “Rationale” should be deleted since the study has been justified in the latter part of the introduction

3. Line 91—“Objectives” should be deleted, lines 92-94 should be moved to the introduction as an aim of the study

4. Tables 1 and 2 appear quite complex and ambiguous. I suggest these 2 tables should be simplified and summarized to highlight and showcase the important and pertinent findings of the previous works done. Information like methods of data analysis and study objectives may be left out while information on participants’ characteristics and sample size should be summarized. What is more important is the summary of main findings.

5. Line 403 “Results of quantitative studies” --- This seems like a repetition of table 2. Kindly summarise or state what is not obvious from table 2

6. Table 4 seems more like a repetition of table 2.

7. Line 474 “Summary of findings” should be removed

8. Was there any difference in Long covid symptoms between males and females?

9. There should be a conclusion paragraph in the discussion which should summarise the findings of this study.

Reviewer #2: 11 -07-2023

From

Reviewer

To

Editor

PLOS ONE

Dear authors

Re: Reviewers’ comments on manuscript enlisted “What is the impact of long-term COVID-19 on workers in healthcare settings? A rapid systematic review of current evidence”. Manuscript ID - PONE-D-23-14983

Thank you for this invitation to review this manuscript. The authors should attend to the point-to-point raised queries. It is my utmost pleasure to review this manuscript. Please find enclosed my review comments.

1. Please was this review registered? Please quote the registration number.

2. ‘Discussion’ is NOT classically part of abstract. The abstract should highlight aim, methods, results, limitations and strength and conclusions from the work.

3. Could this be a limitation? Your work did not gather information that relates Long Covid with covid vaccination. Could those symptoms follow effect of vaccination or Long Covid?

4. Authors should please include the keywords used with extensions in their search strategy. Please revisit appendix 1 for a clearer search strategy and keyword representation.

5. Please what tool / software was used for data screening, and extraction? Please indicate.

6. “There was no restriction on language or study type at the search stage. Results were limited to those published from December 2019. Searches were all carried out in November 2021 and updated in December 2022.” Please did you exclude 2020 period in this study? See Line 135, 136, 137.

7. What tool was used in the assessment of list of Bias? Line 236

8. I suggest that the discussion section be shortened by half as this segment appear verbose.

9. A sub-analysis of long COVID versus covid vaccination was not considered in this study. Can this be a Limitation? This study was limited to hospital only, could this be a limitation?

10. Someone proficient in English to go through the whole manuscript correcting all syntax and typographical errors e.g. “The medicolegal aspect is huge, and I think possibly certainly feels that way as a GP and it’s scary to not be able to recognize potentially where you have deficits because if you can’t recognize them then that’s an UNKNOWN UNKNOWN in what can you do with that. And just the sort of fast-paced nature of GP and as…” See line 267. Repeated word highlighted.

11. I am not comfortable with the placement of tables in between text. International manuscript standards prefer tables and figures after the reference lists.

12. Authors should write in such a manner as to avoid plagiarism

Reviewer #3: Basically the writing is very good, but should be given a year limit, wheater the last 3 years so that the data is more relevant. Though there are grammatical and editorial problem that need correction in ur papaer.

**********

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: Yes: Michael Sylvester Archibong

Reviewer #2: Yes: Dr. IGBODIKE Emeka Philip MBBS, FWACS, FMCOG

Reviewer #3: 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.

PONE-D-23-14983R1What is the impact of long-term COVID-19 on workers in healthcare settings? A rapid systematic review of current evidencePLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Cruickshank,

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 submit your revised manuscript by Feb 01 2024 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,

Akaninyene Eseme Bernard Ubom, MBBS, MWACS, OMI Fellow

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments:

Even though the authors have satisfactorily addressed most of the reviewers’ queries and comments, this work remains too verbose and lengthy.

-The Introduction should be abbreviated to 300-400 words maximum

-The methodology should be made more concise and precise leaving out unnecessary details.

-Results of qualitative studies: Reduce quotes to a maximum of 2 salient and relevant quotes under each theme

-Results of quantitative results: Listing every symptom and the number of studies where each was found is unnecessary. List the most important/most common symptoms and other symptoms can be mentioned collectively with appropriate references.

-The discussion should be abbreviated to 500-600 words maximum. The Discussion should explain the study findings with relevant literature references/citations and also compare with similar or previous studies.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

[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.

What is the impact of long-term COVID-19 on workers in healthcare settings? A rapid systematic review of current evidence

PONE-D-23-14983R2

Dear Dr. Cruickshank,

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,

Akaninyene Eseme Bernard Ubom, MBBS, MWACS, OMI Fellow, OWE Fellow

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Authors have satisfactorily addressed all queries and suggestions.

Reviewers' comments: