Referee report. For: SARS-CoV-2 and the role of orofecal transmission: a systematic review [version 1; peer review: 1 approved with reservations]
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Mode of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is of key public health importance. SARS-CoV-2 has been detected in the feces of some COVID-19 patients, suggesting the possibility that the virus could, in addition to droplet and fomite transmission, be transmitted via the orofecal route. Methods: This review is part of an Open Evidence Review on Transmission Dynamics of COVID-19. We conduct ongoing searches using WHO COVID-19 Database, LitCovid, medRxiv, and Google Scholar; assess study quality based on five criteria and report important findings on an ongoing basis. Where necessary, authors are contacted for further details on the content of their articles. Results: We include searches up until 20 December 2020. We included 110 relevant studies: 76 primary observational studies or reports, and 35 reviews (one cohort study also included a review) examining the potential role of orofecal transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Of the observational studies, 37 were done in China. A total of 48 studies (n=9,081 patients) reported single cases, case series or cohort data on individuals with COVID-19 diagnosis or their contacts and 46 (96%) detected binary RT-PCR with 535 out of 1358 samples positive for SARs-CoV-2 (average 39.4%). The results suggest a long duration of fecal shedding, often recorded after respiratory samples tested negative, and symptoms of gastrointestinal disease were reported in several studies. Twenty-nine studies reported finding SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater, river water or toilet areas. Six studies attempted viral culture from COVID-19 patients’ fecal samples: culture was successful in 3 of 6 studies, and one study demonstrated invasion of the virus into the intestinal epithelial cells. Conclusions: Varied observational and mechanistic evidence suggests SARS-CoV-2 can infect and be shed from the gastrointestinal tract, including some data demonstrating viral culture in fecal samples. Future studies should test this hypothesis rigorously to allow the development of appropriate public health measures.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.070 | 0.576 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.006 | 0.008 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.011 | 0.014 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.006 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.016 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.379 | 0.086 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".