One of the key voices that helped lead Ontario’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic over the past two and a half years is stepping down.
The co-chair of the Ontario Scientific Advisory Panel on COVID-19, Dr. Adalstein Brown, has announced that he will be stepping down to focus on his work as Dean of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.
He will be replaced by Dr. Upton Allen, who is a long-time member of the scientific desk as well as chief of infectious diseases at the Hospital for Sick Children.
“We want to extend our sincere thanks to Prof. Adalstein Brown for his outstanding leadership as one of the inaugural co-chairs of the Scientific Advisory Panel,” said Ontario Public Health Vice-President and Scientific Panel Co-Chair Dr. Brian Schwartz in a news release. “Over the past two years, Prof. Brown has been at the forefront of supporting the province’s response to COVID-19, leading the development and implementation of the Modeling Consensus Table, providing exceptional leadership and communication with experts, stakeholders and the public on behalf of the table and bringing together front-line academics and practitioners with diverse backgrounds to provide coordinated, actionable scientific advice to Ontario’s decision makers.”
Brown has been a regular at many of the press conferences held by the table during the pandemic, often using the pulpit to urge the government to introduce public health measures aimed at limiting the spread of COVID-19, including the stay-at-home order passed in April 2021
During his time at the table, he also earned a reputation for giving particularly candid assessments of the situation facing Ontario.
At a press conference in February 2021, he was asked if a modeling performance actually predicted “disaster” and pulled no punches, telling a reporter, “I don’t think you’re missing anything.”
During another press conference in December 2021, he warned that the coming Omicron wave would be “the worst wave of the pandemic” and made the case for “circuit breaker” restrictions to reduce contact.
“Neither public health measures nor vaccinations alone will be sufficient to blunt the Omicron wave,” he warned at the time.
The announcement that Brown will no longer lead the scientific desk comes just months after the departure of the desk’s scientific director, Dr. Peter Juni.
Brown has been at the helm of the science desk since its inception in July 2020.
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