PONE-D-20-14655

Clinical Characteristics and Risk Factors for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) among Patients under Investigation in Thailand

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Kiertiburanakul,

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Muhammad Adrish

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?

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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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

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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: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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: The article addresses the timely and critical information on the clinical characteristics and risk factors for COVID-19, among the PUIs. The findings of the study add so much of valuable information to medical literature. The article has been written well and data have been analysed appropriately.

However, following are the minor comments to be addressed by the authors:

1. The retrospective review has been done in PUIs covering a period of only 2 weeks. Though the authors have mentioned that this was when there were highest rates of cases reported. It would have added more strength to the analysis had more patients been included.

2. In both the PUIs and the COVID-19 positive population, there is a majority of female population. This is unlike the reports from other countries such as China and India. Can the authors throw more light on this gender difference observed in this study population as against other geographical locations?

3. Patients not being on medical coverage is being found to be an important risk factor owing to the lower socio-economic status and crowded living conditions. That brings up the concern on whether the close contacts of those patients with no medical coverage were traced and tested?

4. In line numbers 105 to 108, there is mention of including cases that did not match the case definition. But there is no mention of the numbers of this category that were included.

5. Also, there is no break up of the numbers of the PUIs being classified as severe and non-severe cases.

6. Line 135 &136 mentions collection of endotracheal aspirates from patients who were intubated. Wondering how many and why were they being intubated even before specimen collection status?

7. What is the fate of the majority of the PUIs tested negative for COVID-19? What could have contributed to the fever, respiratory symptoms among them? Were they tested for other respiratory conditions?

Reviewer #2: This manuscript titiled 'Clinical Characteristics and Risk Factors for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

among Patients under Investigation in Thailand' is very well written and has useful information in the current situation. Its interesting to see that few of the patients had life threatening, other co-morbidity along with the Covid-19.

I understand that lot of background information is collected from the patients in the hospital. I am not sure if some of it is relevant for the scientific discussion part of this paper. For ex. the religion of the patients. I have hard time figuring out why is it mentioned in the paper if its not discussed anywhere in detail. Same is the case for mentioning percentage of male patient when there is not significant correlation. Thanks.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Clinical Characteristics and Risk Factors for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) among Patients under Investigation in Thailand

PONE-D-20-14655R1

Dear Dr. Kiertiburanakul,

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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Kind regards,

Muhammad Adrish

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 #1: 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 #1: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: 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 #1: 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 #1: 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 #1: The comments raised have been appropriately addressed by the authors in the revised version of manuscript

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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 #1: No