Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 by children to contacts in schools and households: a prospective cohort and environmental sampling study in London

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  1. Ashley Murphy

    Review 1: "Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 by children attending school. Interim report on an observational, longitudinal sampling study of infected children, contacts, and the environment"

    Reviewer: Ashley Murphy (Northwestern University ) | 📒📒📒 ◻️◻️

  2. Ashley Murphy

    Review of "Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 by children attending school. Interim report on an observational, longitudinal sampling study of infected children, contacts, and the environment"

    Reviewer: Ashley Murphy (Northwestern University ) | 📒📒📒 ◻️◻️

  3. SciScore for 10.1101/2021.03.08.21252839: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: Ethical approval: The study was approved by a research ethics committee as an amendment to an existing study (Schools Transmission Study REC reference 18/LO/0025; IRAS Reference 225006).
    Consent: Informed consent was obtained from all participants or parents/guardians, and assent was obtained from any participant aged under 18.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Cell Line Authenticationnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Experimental Models: Cell Lines
    SentencesResources
    Samples with high viral load (Ct value <30) were inoculated into Vero cells for culture of infectious virus cell culture as previously reported.
    Vero
    suggested: CLS Cat# 605372/p622_VERO, RRID:CVCL_0059)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    There are limitations to our study. Schools were broadly very supportive, but the burden of supporting a study in the middle of a pandemic was considered too much by some; one school declined to participate despite recruitment of a case and household. Participation of contacts in the bubble group who were quarantined at home was lower than anticipated. A previous longitudinal observational study of scarlet fever transmission achieved 40-50% participation among classroom contacts, although in that study children remained in school apart from index cases (14). In the present study, although a participation rate of almost 30% was achieved in school contacts, participation among bubble contacts who were isolating was only 10-15%, limiting our ability to detect transmission events within the bubble. Exchanging study literature with parents of children who were isolating was challenging, as schools use pared-down communication tools. Participation rates in other COVID-19 research studies have declined markedly since the onset of the pandemic in March, hence research and pandemic fatigue may be another obstacle (15). The participation rate was in contrast to a recently published school study from Norway, where 80% of contacts took part (16). That study, which examined almost 300 school-related contacts of 13 cases, used saliva to screen for secondary cases at the start and end of a 10-day isolation period and reported no secondary cases, albeit 3 cases were identified at the start o...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: We found the following clinical trial numbers in your paper:

    IdentifierStatusTitle
    ISRCTN13773960NANA


    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.


    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.


    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.