Special issue on communications and networking approaches for combating COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact across the globe. This includes the many lives lost and the severe disruption to economies and daily lives. Researchers in a variety of fields have been motivated to use their expertise to help address the many challenges of this on-going pandemic. Communication and Networking researchers are among these. Communications and networking technologies can be utilized to help facilitate contact tracing and other forms of remote health monitoring. Epidemic models developed for studying the propagation of information and viruses in communication networks can be adapted to study the propagation of a true epidemic like COVID-19. Techniques such as machine learning can be utilized to make better predictions from limited public health data. Approaches for security and privacy can be leveraged to protect confidential health information. The goal of this special issue of the Journal of Communications and Networks is to highlight some of the work being done in these important areas.