In this letter, we describe some of the most important objectives and needs in pandemic control. We identify the main open problems in the different stages of the decision making process, as well as the most significant challenges to overcome them, leading to promising future research directions. We provide a concise review of the most recent literature describing such challenges, highlighting the main results, achievements and methodologies that can be employed to address them. In particular, we discuss some promising recent techniques that have been successfully applied to the Covid-19 pandemic and could be very valuable in the design of novel methodologies to face future pandemics. @en