NEW YORK – Buffalo Bills owner Terry Pegula stepped out of the National Football League’s fall meetings Tuesday midway through the first afternoon after receiving word of a possible Covid-19 exposure.
Pegula, 70, learned that his daughter Jessica’s tennis coach tested positive for Covid-19. Pegula and the coach attended Jessica’s wedding last Friday in Asheville, N.C.
A Bills source told The News on Tuesday that Terry Pegula is considered a “non-football close contact,” a term that is applied to close contacts within the organization that are outside of the team.
It was not immediately apparent whether Kim Pegula, the Bills president and Terry’s wife, was deemed a close contact. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines a close contact as being less than 6 feet from an infected person for a total of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period.
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Kim Pegula did not attend the meetings.
Both Terry and Kim Pegula received their Covid-19 vaccines in the spring, the Bills announced at the time.
News of the exposure prompted Pegula to exit the meetings, scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday in midtown Manhattan. The meetings are the first in-person gathering of owners and executives from the league’s 32 teams since December 2019. They will include a brief report Wednesday on the Bills’ negotiations with New York State and Erie County to build a new stadium.
Pegula, who flew from Florida to New York City on Tuesday morning, left the meetings on his own volition and out of an abundance of caution, according to a Pegula Sports and Entertainment official, who added that the owner flew to Buffalo.
Jessica Pegula, who is a professional tennis player, married Taylor Gahagen in a ceremony last week that also appeared to be attended by members of Pegula Sports and Entertainment, the organization that oversees the family’s holdings, and Bills staff.
“The sweetest, most beautiful and fun wedding ever!” Hayley Beane, wife of Bills General Manager Brandon Beane, commented on an Instagram photo of the bride and groom posted by Kim Pegula.
Pegula’s potential exposure was first reported by Daniel Kaplan of The Athletic.
The NFL’s procedure for managing exposure by team owners was not immediately apparent. But Dr. John Sellick, an epidemiologist with Kaleida Health, Veterans Affairs and the University at Buffalo, told The News that broadly speaking, unvaccinated people who are exposed to Covid need to quarantine for 10 days “as long as they stay asymptomatic.”
Fully vaccinated people, he said, should get tested if they come into close contact with an infected individual, or if they are exhibiting symptoms. Testing after contact, Sellick added, should come five to seven days after exposure, “even if you don’t have symptoms,” and you should mask indoors outside your own home for two weeks, or until testing negative. That window suggests Pegula and other potential close contacts at the wedding will need to test negative through Friday to be fully out of the incubation window.
