Review Reports - Genomic Epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 in Western Burkina Faso, West Africa

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors describe the trend over about 2 years of SARS-CoV-2 infection in the area of interest, also attempting to reconstruct its geographical origin of transmission. The manuscript is well developed and the topic well described. A limitation is that the analysis stops in March 2022 due to absence of viral genomic sequencing, while the work is presented in November. However, I suggest publication of the work only following minimal revisions.

Lane 110: replace SARS CoV-2 with SARS-CoV-2

Lanes 155-156; 189-191; 337-372; 379; 390-397: Check the font; it appears to be different sizes

Lane 161: report e.g. in italic

Check the font size of the captions

Author Response

AUTHORS’ RESPONSE – We are grateful to the reviewer for accepting to revise our work and we thank him for his positive remarks.

Lane 110: replace SARS CoV-2 with SARS-CoV-2

AUTHORS’ RESPONSE – We have corrected these mistakes.

Lanes 155-156; 189-191; 337-372; 379; 390-397: Check the font; it appears to be different sizes

AUTHORS’ RESPONSE – We have corrected these mistakes.

Lane 161: report e.g. in italic

AUTHORS’ RESPONSE – We have corrected these mistakes.

Check the font size of the captions

AUTHORS’ RESPONSE – We have corrected these mistakes.

Reviewer 2 Report

Reviewer’s report

Manuscript ID: viruses-2034880

Genomic epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 in western Burkina Faso, West Africa

In this manuscript, authors describe the genomic epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 in west Burkina Faso. This study could enrich international databases with SARS-CoV-2’s whole genome sequences from Africa which is the least represented continent in terms of sequences and publications regarding COVID-19. The paper is well written, clear, and fluent; however, I have very few comments that hopefully can help the authors in improving the manuscript.

1. Figure 1: Could you please modify the colors, they are very close use different colors

2. Figures in the supplementary material is it better to replace these illustrations by screenshots from google earth pro using your phylogeography results which could show better the introductions of different variants from neighboring countries

3. Please verify the spelling character size all over the text

4. In the references section authors could use the following reference doi: 10.3390/v14051007 for the introduction of A.27 lineage from Niger

Author Response

AUTHORS’ RESPONSE – We are grateful to the reviewer for accepting to revise our work and we thank him for his positive remarks.

Figure 1: Could you please modify the colors, they are very close use different colors

AUTHORS’ RESPONSE – We have now modified colours for more clarity.

Figures in the supplementary materialis it better to replace these illustrations by screenshots from google earth pro using your phylogeography results which could show better the introductions of different variants from neighboring countries

AUTHORS’ RESPONSE – Unfortunately we have not integrated discrete location states in our tree model to be able to generate such figures.

Please verify the spelling character size all over the text

AUTHORS’ RESPONSE – We have corrected these mistakes.

In the references section authors could use the following reference doi: 10.3390/v14051007 for the introduction of A.27 lineage from Niger

AUTHORS’ RESPONSE – We have added this reference according to the reviewer’s recommendation.