The following review has been prepared in collaboration with members of the MRC-NIHR Trials Methodology Research Partnership. The reviewers named above, and other, unnamed discussants of the paper, are all qualified statisticians with experience in clinical trials. Our objective is to provide a rapid review of publications, preprints and protocols from clinical trials of COVID-19 treatments, independent of journal specific review processes. We aim to provide timely, constructive, focused, clear advice aimed at improving both the research outputs under review, as well as future studies. Given our collective expertise (clinical trial statistics) our reviews focus on the designs of the trials and other statistical content (methods, presentation and accuracy of results, inferences). Here we review A Trial of Lopinavir–Ritonavir in Adults Hospitalized with Severe Covid-19, by B.Cao et al, published in the New England Journal of Medicine on 18 March 2020. This was one of the first randomised controlled trials of treatments for COVID-19 to be published, and the first in a high-profile medical journal.

This version notes a response to the review. There were no edits made to the review itself.