Emergence of African Swine Fever in Poland (2014–2021). Successes and Failures in Disease Eradication
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments from my previous review have been addressed. I have no further comments.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Many thanks for your valuable comments and suggestions.
Thank you for the acceptance of introduced changes to the manuscript.
Regards
Grzegorz Woźniakowski
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors,
The manuscript reports interesting data updating previous papers and making them available to non polish readers. However, the aim and main contributions are not described clearly in the abstract and neither appear when reading the manuscript because of the structure of it that should be completely revised. This could avoid repetitions and dilution of the main messages.
In the introduction, structure of the adminsitrative organization of Poland (what does a voivodship correspond to ? the smallest administrative unit ?) and of the pig production structure prevailing in the country along with the size of the premises, biosecurity level, distribution over the country; but also information regarding wild boars could be assembled. General EFSA information regarding control of the disease, including the absence of vaccine could also probably follow. This would set the frame of the description of the epidemiological situation in domestic and wild boars before explaining what efforts have been made to control the disease and what should be aimed now from what has been learned.
List of figures should not be given in sentences as in line 43 for example or 46, even more if a bar chart is available to readers. A figure is surprising in an introduction section.
line 24: Germany has now experiences its first cases in domestic pigs.
line 25 (fourth line 25) : a word is missing
Figure A and B: why present seasonality in different countries if the focus is Poland and if the text refers to a total number of outbreaks (as seasonality has been mentionned before in the manuscript) ?
Why insist on the human factors regarding the ASF spread and not consider them as important in terms of future perspectives and conclusions ?
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Many thanks for your valuable comments. Please find the response to your suggestion and requested amendments within the manuscript.
Reviewer 2: The manuscript reports interesting data updating previous papers and making them available to non polish readers. However, the aim and main contributions are not described clearly in the abstract and neither appear when reading the manuscript because of the structure of it that should be completely revised. This could avoid repetitions and dilution of the main messages.
Author GW: The manuscript has been amended. The changes are tracked by MS Word tool. The repetitions have been deleted.
Reviewer 2: In the introduction, structure of the adminsitrative organization of Poland (what does a voivodship correspond to ? the smallest administrative unit ?) and of the pig production structure prevailing in the country along with the size of the premises, biosecurity level, distribution over the country; but also information regarding wild boars could be assembled.
Author GW: The voivodeship corresponds to the largest unit on the country level. Currently in Poland there are 16 voivodeships, 314 poviats and 2477 counties. Additional comment has been added to the manuscript. Additional sentences focusing structure of pig production in Poland and potential multiplicity of wild boar have been added.
Reviewer 2: General EFSA information regarding control of the disease, including the absence of vaccine could also probably follow. This would set the frame of the description of the epidemiological situation in domestic and wild boars before explaining what efforts have been made to control the disease and what should be aimed now from what has been learned.
Author GW: Additional comments on ASF eradication measures have been added.
Rewiever 2: List of figures should not be given in sentences as in line 43 for example or 46, even more if a bar chart is available to readers. A figure is surprising in an introduction section.
Author GW: The citation of figures have been moved to the next section elaborating on ASF spread in Poland.
Reviewer 2: line 24: Germany has now experiences its first cases in domestic pigs.
Author GW: Change introduced.
Reviewer 2: line 25 (fourth line 25) : a word is missing
Author GW: Corrected.
Reviewer 2: Figure A and B: why present seasonality in different countries if the focus is Poland and if the text refers to a total number of outbreaks (as seasonality has been mentionned before in the manuscript) ?
Author GW: I agree but the same seasonality in ASF occurrence is also observed in Poland. Additional comment has been added to the manuscript.
Reviewer 2: Why insist on the human factors regarding the ASF spread and not consider them as important in terms of future perspectives and conclusions ?
Author GW: I agree. Additional comments have been added to the conclusions section.
Many thanks for your kind and professional review.
Kind regards
Grzegorz Woźniakowski
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors,
Manuscript is improving. However some important comments are still pending, not all comments have been taken into account. In particular regarding the structure of the manuscript and the english writing. For the structure for example figures have been moved but the way the sentence for administrative unit has been added is surprising. It does not link with the rest. For the englaish an example: line
Line 34 : ‘where a wild boar was found dead, lying frozen… » would probably be clearer to the reader.
In the abstract:
These are not lessons learnt. These are observations/facts regarding the wild pop. The part of the sentence on domestic pop linked with biosecurity is more informative. Is it that Poland was relying on biosecurity rules for controlling wild pop ? If yes, which ones ? What was the rational for it ?
What do the authors mean by ‘no firm eradication measures’ ? Is it that they are not implemented for long enough or by a suffisent number of people or … ?
The list of number still appear in the text although they are also in a figure.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Many thanks for your second round of revisions. Accordingly to your suggestions the manuscript has been revised by native-English speaking person. The structure of the manuscript has been changed also. Since the suggestion regarding administrative organization was questionable it has been omitted in the current version.
Reviewer: Line 34 : ‘where a wild boar was found dead, lying frozen… » would probably be clearer to the reader.
Author GW: The sentence has been revised. I hope it is more clear now.
Reviewer: In the abstract: These are not lessons learnt. These are observations/facts regarding the wild pop.
Author GW: Corrected. Thank you.
Reviewer: The part of the sentence on domestic pop linked with biosecurity is more informative. Is it that Poland was relying on biosecurity rules for controlling wild pop ? If yes, which ones ? What was the rational for it ?
Author GW: The sentence has been changed.
Reviewer: What do the authors mean by ‘no firm eradication measures’ ? Is it that they are not implemented for long enough or by a suffisent number of people or … ?
Author GW: This issue has been explained in the following sentences: "In case of control of ASF spread in wild boar population the measures applied in other EU countries have been applied including active wild boar carcass search and disposal along with sanitary and reduction hunting. These measures showed to be not fully effective also".
Reviewer: The list of number still appear in the text although they are also in a figure.
Author GW: The numbers of outbreaks in wild boar and domestic pigs have been omitted within the text of this manuscript.
Many thanks for your suggestions and revisions.
