Dear Dr. Ebelin,

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Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English??>

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes

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Reviewer #1:  The title stresses on childhood vaccination. I am not sure why this is the case. The later part after the quotation marks in the title would suffice.

Again in the discussion, the details of impact of childhood vaccination were discussed in much details and that was not reflected in the results that much.

Reviewer #2:  This study is unsuitable for publication in this journal because it is not scientific. Whether this is a fake disease or not should have been discussed in 2020 and 2021. It is better published in a newspaper than in a scientific journal.

Reviewer #3:  ABSTRACT

Introduction: Emphatic statement like… According to the World Health Organisation should be reconsidered since there are no in-text citations

Method: There is nothing like qualitative case study. The authors should consider the the use of the term appropriately as case study. In-depth interviews is a procedure and NOT A TOOL. THEREFORE, the use of in-depth interviews in that context of the study is appropriate in the method section of the abstract

The use of community members should be specified since the data were collected from specified participants in the community

Conclusion: This appears more of recommendations and not conclusion. Again, if they are recommendations, they are generally sweeping and should be specified

METHOD

Study design

It will be appropriate to discuss only the study approach here. And discuss the data collection procedure subsequently together with the role of each member. Fusing all together with a heading as study design in my view is problematic.

STUDY SETTING

Is Volta region considered as Southern Ghana? Again, this needs to be justified properly.

2.4. Training of data collectors and quality control

In line 199, the use of validity and reliability is NOT correct SINCE qualitative research cannot establish that in the data collection tool. The authors need to actually explain the rigor employed in the study.

RESULT

This section is detailed enough

However, under line 523, the use of the heading Impact of limited engagement in addressing misinformation is problematic since qualitative study cannot establish impact. Try to rephrase it.

5.0 Recommendation and conclusion

Conclusion should rather come before recommendations

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Comments FAKE NEWS.pdf

“People will not even bring out their children to be immunised, because of the corona vaccine”: fake news, misinformation, vaccine hesitancy and the role of community engagement in COVID-19 vaccine acceptance in Southern Ghana

PONE-D-24-57065R1

Dear Dr. Ebelin,

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.

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Kind regards,

Innocent B. Mboya, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Dear Authors,

Thank you for sufficiently addressing the reviewer comments. Please consider removing the preambles before section 2.0 (Methods) and 5.0 (Conclusion and recommendations). Also, I am not sure whether the journal allows section numbers, please check. In addition, Consider removing the section heading "Conclusion and Recommendation" and keep the subsections as they are.

Best wishes.

Reviewers' comments: