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A massive National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) pandemic-preparedness program focused in part on hantaviruses was already actively underway—and had just achieved unprecedented structural and vaccine-platform mapping of Andes hantavirus—before the highly publicized 2026 international Andes hantavirus outbreak ordeal emerged.
The federally funded initiative, calledPROVIDENT(“Prepositioning Optimized Strategies for Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics against Diverse Emerging Infectious Threats”), officially began in September 2024 and remains active through June 2029, according to NIHRePORTER documents.
The project is run byDr. Kartik Chandran, a professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine’s Department of Microbiology & Immunology.
Importantly, the project is not a small short-term grant.
Albert Einstein College of Medicineannouncedin September 2024 that the consortium received a: “five-year, $14 million per year grant”
That places the total projected funding for the program at roughly $70 million over its active lifespan.
NIH RePORTER separately confirms that the project received $13,946,446 in federal funding during 2024 alone.
The project is part of NIAID’s broaderReVAMPPpandemic-preparedness network, a federal initiative designed to build rapid-response vaccine and monoclonal antibody systems for future outbreak pathogens before emergencies occur publicly.
Critically, hantaviruses were selected as one of the network’s priority “prototype pathogen” categories.
Source: modernity
