Safe University in the Omicron Era: An Adaptable and Adjustable Protocol for the Operation of Universities during Epidemics Caused by Airborne Viruses

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

First of all I want to congratulate the authors with an original and interesting study, which is usually of practical importance. Undoubtedly, the work will be of interest to researchers and administrative staff in different countries. At the same time I think it is important to take into account certain points to make the article even more thorough and interesting for the reader.

1. Provide more information about similar protocols and decisions in other institutions (actually focus on this in the first section, make comparisons in the discussion). It is worth enriching the list of literature with modern research.

2. It is important to note the novelty and advantages of the proposed protocol, what are its possible ways of implementation in other universities.

3. Universities are not homogeneous groups and unite different people who differ in political and religious views, have different cultural backgrounds, different states of physical and mental health. It is important to justify whether and how the protocol takes these points into account.

4. It is also worth answering the question of how the quality of the protocol was tested (involvement of experts, discussions, etc.)

Author Response

Thank you for taking the time to read our work and provide your insightful feedback on it. And thank you so much for your kind and supportive words, they are much appreciated!!

With respect to your specific comments:

1) Following your comment we have added a discussion of publications regarding the protocols that various universities have implemented in order to operate during earlier phases of the pandemic. We should note that no similar (i.e. updated for Omicron and generic) protocols have been proposed to this day; we have updated the manuscript to make this more clear.

2) Thank you for this comment. Regarding the novelty, it is the first protocol to be generic so that it can be applied by other universities. Regarding the way to implement it in other settings, we address it in section 6. We have updated the manuscript to make this more clear.

3) Thank you for this comment, we absolutely agree. We have added a note in the paper, explaining how its generic nature allows for university administrations to choose a form of implementation that best matches the specific university's heterogeneous community. We also clarify that the protocol provides general guidance, as each university moves to the implementation phase it will unavoidably have to examine and further customize various of its aspects.

4) With respect to your request for additional information regarding the testing /results of earlier implementation, unfortunately no such data is available as the earlier version of the protocol was published but not adopted by a university. We have updated the manuscript to make this more clear.

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript is focused on Omicron era. The authors are encouraged to reconsider the focus as Covid-19 era.
After implementing the protocol in late 2021, the post and prior health outcome of the students should have been provided.

Author Response

Thank you for taking the time to read our work and provide your insightful feedback on it. 

The work is indeed generic enough to support operation in any phase of the pandemic, as well as during potential future pandemic caused by other viruses. Thank you for this comment, we appreciate the acknowledgement of the generality of our protocol. We opt to refer to omicron in the title 1) in order to highligh the difference from our previously published work that focused on the delta era of the pandemic and 2) because many of the specifics are based on the characteristics of the current wave.

With respect to your request for additional information regarding the results of earlier implementation, unfortunately no such data is available as the earlier version of the protocol was published but not adopted by a university. We have updated the manuscript to make this more clear.