Response to comments on “Whole lung irradiation as a novel treatment for COVID-19: Interim results of an ongoing phase 2 trial in India”

To the Editor,

We have gone through the comments put forward by Ghaznavi et al. [1] and firstly, we sincerely thank the authors and appreciate their interest in our manuscript [2]. Their first concern is about the use of corticosteroids for all patients included in our study. We would like to clarify that, as stated in the manuscript’s inclusion criteria point 1, pharmacological therapy was based on the then guidelines of Indian Ministry of Health and family welfare for the management of moderate to severe COVID-19. Remdesivir, Zinc and Ascorbic acid were excluded from the treatment guidelines later following emergence of new evidence. Secondly, the authors have commented that ‘patients requiring oxygen were not clearly described/identified in the study’. All patients required and received supplemental oxygen as they met the criteria defined in inclusion criteria point 2.

Lastly, about the duration of follow-up, we do agree that 2 weeks follow-up was not ideal, especially for mortality data and mentioned the same ourselves in the manuscript as one of the limitations of the study.