Routine thoracic surgery could be performed safely during the COVID-19 pandemic A study in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology (JTO) comparing surgeries performed at one Chinese hospital in 2019 with a similar date range during the COVID-19 pandemic found that routine thoracic surgery and invasive examinations were performed safely. The JTO is the official journal of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer. Wentao Fang, MD, chief director of the Department of Thoracic Surgery, Shanghai Chest Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China and his colleagues analyzed the number of elective procedures by a single surgeon team between 2019 and 2020 and compared the clinicopathological characteristics, surgical procedures and perioperative results of this year with the corresponding period last year.