Dr. Alex Summers officially named MOH, “strongly recommends” continued masking

After four months of holding the job on an interim basis, Dr. Alex Summers is now the region’s full-time medical officer of health.

Summers was offered the job after receiving unanimous approval from the Middlesex-London Board of Health on Monday evening.

“Dr. Summers is a familiar face to our community,” said Board Chair Matthew Reid at the news conference on Wednesday afternoon. “Having been with the health unit for almost four years and serving as the acting medical officer of health for the last four months.”

Reid praised Summers’ “vision, expertise and commitment to our community and the health unit” when introducing him at the news conference.

“The pandemic remains front of mind, COVID’s not going anywhere,” Summers said when asked about his top priorities as he takes the job. “How do we make our city healthier? How do we make our county healthier? The opioid crisis continues to be something that’s heavy on our hearts and minds and we need to be able to refocus our energy to understand where we’re at after two years where COVID has really drawn so much attention.”

He was introduced on the same day that Dr. Kieran Moore announced that mask mandates will be ending on March 21.

“We still see pronounced Omicron transmission in the community, and I am anticipating that cases are going to go up as these public health protections get scaled back. We’ll continue to strongly recommend masking as much as possible in indoor environments. Masks have proven to be a highly effective, low problem intervention.”

When asked whether Moore’s decision was the wrong one, Summers said it was complicated.

“From a public health perspective, the benefits of these masks are pretty clear,” he said. “Decision makers at the province have a variety of other factors they’re always considering. I recognize for some, wearing these masks is something they don’t want to do anymore. That’s something I can understand. For now, I would still strongly recommend masks.”

Summers takes on the job after the resignation of Dr. Chris Mackie last week – a resignation that has been accompanied mostly by silence from the Board of Health, as well as concerns about workplace misconduct, which were first reported by London News Today.

“One of our key priorities is around caring for our people and that will be our focus for the next little while,” Summers said when asked about the workplace environment at the health unit. “We continue to meet with leadership and other staff members to understand what their needs are. I think that renewed focus will help us understand how to make our environment as healthy and supportive and joyful as we can.”

Current and former Health Unit employees, speaking on the condition of anonymity, called Mackie “demeaning” and said he created a stressful work environment. In the summer of 2020, his role of Medical Officer of Health and CEO was split into two jobs, which sources told London News Today was done as a way to create a “buffer” between Mackie and certain staff members.

Emily Williams took over the CEO job on a full-time basis earlier this year, and said her role will not change as Summers becomes the medical officer of health.

“No comment,” Williams said when asked about her own relationship with Mackie during the time the two worked together.

Reid also declined to comment when asked about Mackie’s exit from the Health Unit and a report about costly external investigations and whether those were related to current MLHU staff members.

“When I look at our senior leadership team, I’m just delighted by the people that I get to work with. We’ve got a team that trusts one another. A team that’s aligned on our values,” Summers said. “I’m actually very, very confident in the work environment amongst the senior leadership team and amongst the organization.”

“My relationship with Chris is one that I would keep for me and Chris,” Summers added when asked if he had a good relationship with Mackie.