Amirpouyan Namavarian

Dr. Amirpouyan Namavarian, MD is a resident at the University of Toronto’s Department of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery section. He is notable in the COVID-19 pandemic due to his membership in the Critical Drugs Coalition and his contributions to articles discussing “anti-vaxxers” and vaccine hesitancy.

Namavarian completed his Bachelor of Sciences in Interdisciplinary Medical Science at the University of Western Ontario, where he attended from 2012-2016.¹⁾ He graduated from the University of Toronto as an MD in 2021, at which time he began postdoctoral training.

Namavarian served as a Research Assistant at London Health Sciences Centre (June 2016 - June 2017); Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry (July 2016 - May 2017); Trillium Health Partners (January 2018 - January 2021); and Mount Sinai Hospital (June 2019 - August 2019).

Namavarian is described as a co-founder of the Critical Drugs Coalition.^{2) 3)}

Namayarian was part of a team of “academics, doctors and doctors in training, entrepreneurs, software developers, and other volunteers from a wide range of backgrounds” that created MyTrace, a mobile contact tracing application.⁴⁾ The project was a collaboration with the University of Toronto and the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence, and was shuttered in June 2020 when the Government of Canada announced a national contact tracing app. Other partners included Empower Health, 247 Labs and Safe Paths (a project of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology).^{5) 6)}

Namavarian is one of four founders of Vaccines for the World, a seemingly student-run website with an open letter to the office of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau requesting Canada combat “vaccine nationalism” by offering more COVID-19 vaccines to poorer countries.^{7) 8)}

Namavarian has authored several articles regarding COVID-19, vaccination and its associated behavioural science.⁹⁾