State studies how to safely allow fans into Bills games

The state Health Department is looking to build an experimental model, based on data and testing, that could pave the way for letting fans into Bills Stadium without creating the risk of significantly spreading Covid-19, Cuomo said.

"We're researching teams and protocols across the nation," he said during a conference call with reporters.

The state has kept in close contact with the Bills, Cuomo added, but officials have made no decision about whether to allow fans into the stadium for the first time this season.

"It's all a work in progress," Cuomo said.

The Bills have one home game left in the regular season, against the Miami Dolphins on Jan. 3, but fan attention has turned to the playoffs. 

The team has clinched the AFC East division crown and is assured of hosting at least one home playoff game for the first time since the 1996 season.

Cuomo earlier this season had pledged to visit Bills Stadium for a firsthand look at planning for the return of home fans.

He has not done so and, since then, the rate of the virus' spread here and across the state has increased sharply since late summer and early fall.

On Tuesday, Cuomo appeared to defend his failure to fulfill that promise, saying he was intimately familiar with the layout of the stadium because of previous visits and because of his involvement in the negotiations surrounding the most recent renovations to the Orchard Park venue. State funding helped pay for the work, he noted.

Cuomo on Friday said he "would love nothing more" than seeing Bills fans in attendance at a home playoff game.

Across the NFL, some teams have let fans attend games. Spectators were allowed at seven of this past weekend's games with varying capacity limits, according to NBC Sports.

The seven venues where those games were held, as of Friday, were the stadiums of the Atlanta Falcons, Dallas Cowboys, Tennessee Titans, Indianapolis Colts, Miami Dolphins, New Orleans Saints and Cincinnati Bengals.

Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz on Monday said that if the Cuomo administration is going to allow fans to attend a home playoff game, which would be held the weekend of Jan. 9, the state would need to let the county and the Bills know this within the next week or so.

After fielding a number of questions about Bills fans and in-person attendance, however, Poloncarz expressed frustration that people weren't staying focused on doing whatever is necessary to combat the deadly virus.

Also during Tuesday's conference call, Cuomo said that the state's Wadsworth Laboratory in Albany has begun conducting tests for the Covid-19 variant that has raised alarms in the United Kingdom.

Wadsworth has conducted about 3,700 tests of random samples and so far has not discovered the variant's presence in the state. The lab is working with six hospitals to gather samples, and on Tuesday officials planned to ask Erie County Medical Center to take part in the effort, Cuomo said.

"If it is here, I want to know exactly where it is," the governor said, adding that public health officials would move immediately to try to isolate it.

Cuomo also provided a progress update on the effort to immunize the state's 19 million residents against Covid-19. He said 50,000 vaccinations had been performed as of Tuesday morning.

The state has received 633,000 vaccine doses so far and expects to receive another 300,000 doses by the end of next week. Cuomo added that he's asking anyone involved in administering Covid-19 vaccines – which so far are going to nursing home residents, nursing home staff and front-line health-care workers – to work through the holidays to continue this vital task.

And Cuomo said the good news continues for the five-county region of Western New York, once the hardest-hit region of the state for the virus, but no longer.

The statewide positive test rate is 5.9%. The seven-day rolling average is at 6.5%, a rate that trails five other regions in New York as of Monday.

"That's a big turnaround for Western New York," Cuomo said.