Dear Mr. Wolffram,

Thank you very much for submitting your manuscript "Collaborative nowcasting of COVID-19 hospitalization incidences in Germany" for consideration at PLOS Computational Biology. As with all papers reviewed by the journal, your manuscript was reviewed by members of the editorial board and by several independent reviewers. The reviewers appreciated the attention to an important topic. Based on the reviews, we are likely to accept this manuscript for publication, providing that you modify the manuscript according to the review recommendations.

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Sincerely,

James M McCaw, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS Computational Biology

Virginia Pitzer

Section Editor

PLOS Computational Biology

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Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Authors:

Please note here if the review is uploaded as an attachment.

Reviewer #1: The paper presents a comprehensive evaluation of real-time nowcasting methodologies as applied to COVID-19 hospitalisation incidence in Germany. The measurement of performance utilised appropriate standard scoring rules, with remarks made on the implications of these results on both public health communication and the statistical design of nowcasting models. In particular, the discussion of what model design decisions likely contributed to under- or over-performance is likely to be valuable for guiding future research. The paper is strengthened through its use of a preregistered study design and reproducible methodology. I note a few suggestions that could be made to improve the paper:

1. Addition of the word COVID-19 to the abstract would make the transition from general discussion of nowcasting to the paper’s specific context clearer.

2. Figures 4 and 5 do not have years present on the x-axis or mentioned in the figure caption. The interpretation of this figure (especially regarding the emergence of Omicron) would be clearer with an explicit year present.

3. The effect of day of week on reporting delays is presented (Figure 2), with some models within the ensemble including this as a covariate (Table 1), however, there is little discussion of the impact of this effect on nowcasting performance. Given the large number of modelling problems where the inclusion of a day of week effect must be considered, reflection on this could be interesting.

Reviewer #2: uploaded as attachment

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Have the authors made all data and (if applicable) computational code underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Ruarai Tobin

Reviewer #2: No

Figure Files:

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: report.pdf

Dear Mr. Wolffram,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'Collaborative nowcasting of COVID-19 hospitalization incidences in Germany' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Computational Biology.

Before your manuscript can be formally accepted you will need to complete some formatting changes, which you will receive in a follow up email. A member of our team will be in touch with a set of requests.

Please note that your manuscript will not be scheduled for publication until you have made the required changes, so a swift response is appreciated.

IMPORTANT: The editorial review process is now complete. PLOS will only permit corrections to spelling, formatting or significant scientific errors from this point onwards. Requests for major changes, or any which affect the scientific understanding of your work, will cause delays to the publication date of your manuscript.

Should you, your institution's press office or the journal office choose to press release your paper, you will automatically be opted out of early publication. We ask that you notify us now if you or your institution is planning to press release the article. All press must be co-ordinated with PLOS.

Thank you again for supporting Open Access publishing; we are looking forward to publishing your work in PLOS Computational Biology. 

Best regards,

James M McCaw, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS Computational Biology

Virginia Pitzer

Section Editor

PLOS Computational Biology

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