PONE-D-20-11733

Chinese Control Efficacy on COVID-19

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Zhou,

Thank you very much for submitting your manuscript "Chinese Control Efficacy on COVID-19" (#PONE-D-20-11733) for review by PLOS ONE. As with all papers submitted to the journal, your manuscript was fully evaluated by academic editor (myself) and by independent peer reviewers. The reviewers appreciated the attention to an important health topic, but they raised substantial concerns about the paper that must be addressed before this manuscript can be accurately assessed for meeting the PLOS ONE criteria. Therefore, if you feel these issues can be adequately addressed, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. We can’t, of course, promise publication at that time.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 16 2020 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.

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• 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: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Abdallah M. Samy, PhD

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. In the Methods, please clarify how information about the daily number of confirmed cases for all provinces in mainland China from 11 January 2020 to 22 February 2020 was collected, including the source of the data. Please ensure that sufficient information is provided so that other researchers could potentially replicate these analyses.

3.We note that you have indicated that data from this study are available upon request. PLOS only allows data to be available upon request if there are legal or ethical restrictions on sharing data publicly. For more information on unacceptable data access restrictions, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions.

In your revised cover letter, please address the following prompts:

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We will update your Data Availability statement on your behalf to reflect the information you provide.

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: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: 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

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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

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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: General comments –

• The manuscript needs editing for spell check, English and grammar.

• The control methods deployed in China should also be described considering that these were effective to get the R0 to <1 within a week. It may help other countries to streamline their strategies

Specific comments –

Sample size –

The authors have not described how the sample size was estimated? Was the study adequately powered to predict the outcomes? It is recommended that a post-hoc power analysis be undertaken to assess if study is also adequately powered to meet the study objectives.

Sampling strategy –

How or on what criteria, the sample was selected should be described? Was it representative of the other COVID-19 patients in terms of profile and severity?

Methods –

The authors have not specified what type of distribution their data followed (normal/uniform/discrete/triangular/Beta-PERT distribution), this will determine

how to output a random variable that follows a certain distribution. The authors should specify this and accordingly justify the method used. Did they use any of the data transformation methods? If so this should be specified

Results –

• As Monte Carlo method is a probabilistic method with randomness playing a role in predicting future outcomes, there will always be a margin of error related to the results. The authors should specify the margin of error and confidence probability of valid findings.

• What was the accuracy of this proposed new method to the existing methods for simulation to calculate R0 that the authors have described.

• Kindly describe how exactly can/must we define the inputs and model the underlying processes to use this proposed new method?

• It is recommended that tallying of Simulation results be done to establish reliability

Discussion

• Is the Monte Carlo method that uses a stochastic model to your data? should be discussed

• Discuss the accuracy of your proposed method study vis-à-vis the accuracy of other established methods.

• Strengths and Limitations of the study should be discussed

• Study is conducted in a small sub-set of Chinese population, limitations related to external generalizability should be discussed

Ethical considerations/obligations

The manuscript is silent about the ethical considerations/obligations.

• Was an approval taken from any ethics committee?

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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.

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Reviewer #1: 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-20-11733R1

Chinese Control Efficacy on COVID-19

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Zhou,

Thank you very much for submitting your manuscript "Chinese Control Efficacy on COVID-19" (#PONE-D-20-11733R1) for review by PLOS ONE. As with all papers submitted to the journal, your manuscript was fully evaluated by academic editor (myself) and by independent peer reviewers. The reviewers appreciated the attention to an important health topic, but they raised substantial concerns about the paper that must be addressed before this manuscript can be accurately assessed for meeting the PLOS ONE criteria. Therefore, if you feel these issues can be adequately addressed, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. We can’t, of course, promise publication at that time.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Feb 26 2021 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: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Abdallah M. Samy, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments:

Please address carefully all our comments below. Thanks!

1. We note that the authors state in their abstract "The province-level analysis indicates that Chinese control measures on COVID-19 are very effective and efficient, that is, the effective reproduction numbers of the majority of provinces in mainland China got down to < 1 just by one week from the setting of control measures, and the temporal reproduction number of the week [15 Feb, 21 Feb] is only about 0.18" and also state in their discussion "The results indicate that Chinese control measures have achieved remarkable success..." and "The huge success of Chinese control measures on COVID-19 resulted from the ambitious and aggressive government-led actions." However, their study does not directly test whether specific control measures caused the reduction of R and new cases, and thus, we do not feel that these statements are supported by the rest of the study. To meet our publication criteria that conclusions are supported by the data

(https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/criteria-for-publication#loc-4) we recommend that authors change these sentences to something such as:

Abstract:

"The province-level analysis indicates that the effective reproduction numbers of the majority of provinces in mainland China got down to < 1 just by one week from the setting of control measures, and the temporal reproduction number of the week [15 Feb, 21 Feb] is only about 0.18. It is therefore likely that Chinese control measures on COVID-19 were effective and efficient, though more research needs to be performed."

Discussion:

"Our results suggest that Chinese control measures have been effective..." and

"Government-led actions likely played a role in the reduction of new COVID-19 cases."

2. We also note that PLOS’ guidelines state that the title should be "specific, descriptive, concise, and comprehensible to readers outside the field" (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-title). In this case, we feel that the title is vague and does not describe the methods or aims of the study. We suggest that the title include a reference to the methodology or component to be measured (i.e., temporal reproduction number), the aim of the study (i.e, evaluating the effect of implementing COVID-19 control measures on reproduction number"), and the locale that was studied (i.e., China). For example, a title such as "COVID-19 control measure implementation in China: estimating the effect on temporal reproduction number" would be appropriate.

[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.

Evaluating the effect of Chinese control measures on COVID-19 via temporal reproduction number estimation

PONE-D-20-11733R2

Dear Dr. Zhou,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript, "Evaluating the effect of Chinese control measures on COVID-19 via temporal reproduction number estimation" (PONE-D-20-11733R2), 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,

Abdallah M. Samy, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE