  Since early 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic has had a considerable impact on many
aspects of daily life. A range of different measures have been implemented
worldwide to reduce the rate of new infections and to manage the pressure on
national health services. A primary strategy has been to reduce gatherings and
the potential for transmission through the prioritisation of remote working and
education. Enhanced hand hygiene and the use of facial masks have decreased the
spread of pathogens when gatherings are unavoidable. These particular measures
present challenges for reliable biometric recognition, e.g. for facial-, voice-
and hand-based biometrics. At the same time, new challenges create new
opportunities and research directions, e.g. renewed interest in non-constrained
iris or periocular recognition, touch-less fingerprint- and vein-based
authentication and the use of biometric characteristics for disease detection.
This article presents an overview of the research carried out to address those
challenges and emerging opportunities.
