Reply We thank Singh and colleagues for their great interest in our study. We agree that the strength of our study was to have performed viral cultures to determine whether the virus was still infectious, and therefore potentially transmissible. A decrease in viral titer at day 1 after inclusion was observed in patients receiving povidone iodine nasopharyngeal decolonization (7%; 95% CI, 43%-95% vs 32%; 95% CI, 10%-65%), but the difference was not significant, as reflected by the overlap in 95% CIs. This finding could be attributed to a lack of power of the study. An imbalance in patient characteristics between groups despite randomization, favored by the small sample size, cannot be excluded either. Patients in the intervention group were younger and had fewer comorbidities, although again the difference was not significant. This may ac count in part for the greater decline in viral titer at day 1 in the intervention group. Unfortunately, no adjustment of the results for age was feasible owing to the small sample size.
