Warm, calm, a little hushed too. Of Laurent Kaiser, I only knew the voice, after many telephone conversations exchanged over the epidemics that have occurred in recent years. So I recognized him immediately when he used his organ as he walked someone back to the elevator on the seventh floor of the Geneva University Hospitals (HUG).
Soon after, I found him struggling with a fruit pie in front of his computer in his office. He looks tired and looks out of a surgical marathon, in his OR dress top. In fact, it’s because he spilled coffee on his shirt earlier, I later learned.
During our interview, Laurent Kaiser never ceased to mention me Commissioner Maigret. By his voice so, way Bruno Cremer, which he poses carefully after reflection, but also by his imposing size and finally, becausehe smokes a pipe, taught me to read 24 hours. It would have been a blanquette of veal and not a pie, I would have done like Inspector Lachenal, I would have called him “boss”.
“The simplistic spirit”
He would not have stolen it, because boss, he certainly is. Laurent Kaiser is Chief Physician of the Infectious Diseases Department, Head of the Virology Laboratory and Director of the Center for Emerging Viral Diseases.
The man says he has always had a passion for infectious diseases. His philosophy is not complicated: the microbe is an enemy, so we must try to kill it. “I have a simplistic mind,” he describes.
Of his three caps, he will distribute the first two and receive a new one. Last month, the HUG management appointed him chief doctor of the vast Department of Medicine. The opportunity to pass the torch, without any fear. “At some point, you have to know how to leave. The next generation is phenomenal in virology and infectious diseases, ”he says.
Scientists who know him say that Laurent Kaiser knew how to surround himself well. Among the young guard, Manuel Schibler will replace him at the Virology Laboratory. The team also includes Pauline Vetter and Isabella Eckerle, a specialist in coronaviruses who has notably developed tests for the detection of SARS-CoV-2.
Nothing really predisposed this great virologist to become a great virologist. On his return from the United States in 2000, he discovered “a no man’s land, there was nothing for me”. The career opportunity came from his former boss, Luc Perrin, who entrusted him with his first responsibilities. Little by little, the Kaiser bird made its nest, before becoming the director of the Virology Laboratory six years later.
Brothers and sisters unanimously salute the workhorse, the no-frills type with whom we like to have a drink. “He knows how to combine scientific acuity with Earthly common sense,” said one of them. He is an important person in the fight against covid “,” a charismatic personality, very meticulous, anxious to do well, which sometimes makes him anxious and can complicate things “, warns another.
His research focuses in particular on respiratory viruses such as rhinoviruses, the coronavirus and the influenza virus, long before the H1N1 pandemics of 2009 and Covid-19. Under his leadership, his lab is diversifying and accommodates the National Reference Center for Influenza and Measles, and finally the National Reference Center for Emerging Viral Infections (Crive), responsible for recognizing, within 24 hours, infection with dangerous viruses.
In 2020, it is the covid that arrives. He wants me to take a tour of the premises, to introduce me to his teams hard at work on a Friday evening at aperitif time. It is in this lab that the Alpha variant (then still called English) is for the first time identified on Swiss soil, in December 2020. “He immediately seized the interest of sequencing the genome of the coronavirus, it is he who gave the impetus to the national program of genetic surveillance of the coronavirus”, slips a scientist from Romandie.
Never far
The audience gets used to their voice, to television. And to those of others, which surprised him: “This crisis has seen the flowering of experts and interdisciplinary panels of all kinds. I found myself in meetings with people who spoke about the virus without knowing them, speaking completely disconnected from clinical reality. Of course, covid does not belong only to virologists, but to all of society. But all the same, how do you resolve a crisis, how to anticipate the next, if you don’t understand the fundamentals? ”
He denies being bitter in the matter, preferring to advance his “incomprehension”. Already after the H1N1 epidemic, he felt he was preaching in the desert. The CRIVE is only financially supported lip service by the Federal Office of Public Health, with only one position funded despite an obvious strategic position. “Difficult to fulfill the mission without the help of the HUG, we are ready 24 hours a day, 365 days a year”, regretting that “Switzerland has not learned all the lessons of the crises”.
Laurent Kaiser ensures that he will never be far from his teams who will take over. It’ll be a bit much, no, so how will it hold up? Thanks to the moments spent with family, friends, around a meal and a bottle. He says so, he leaves the smock on the threshold of his house, “It’s not the professor coming home.” It’s more relaxed, we laugh, we share! ” Yes Boss.
Profile
1987 Medical degree from the University of Geneva.
1998 Specialization in clinical virology in Charlottesville, USA.
2006 Director of the Virology Laboratory of the Geneva University Hospitals.
2013 Head of the infectious diseases department.
2015 Founds the Center for Emerging Viral Diseases.
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