Ap Photo/Jeffrey T. Barnes

Will fans be allowed to attend the first Buffalo Bills home playoff game since 1996? In any normal year, the answer would most certainly be yes as the Bills clinched their first AFC East title in 25 years, ensuring at least one home game this January.

However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, fans have had to watch from home as Josh Allen and crews have put together one of their best seasons in more than two decades.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday provided a glimmer of hope, noting that the team proposed allowing 6,700 fans to attend a playoff game. The state Health Department is currently reviewing a model that would test those fans for the virus before entering the stadium and conduct contact tracing afterward.

“The Buffalo Bills are going to have a playoff game,” Cuomo said during a COVID briefing. “Could we allow fans to the game with testing and then contact trace after the game? That’s what the Department of Health has been working on.”

Dr. Howard Zucker, a state health commissioner, said allowing fans inside the Orchard Park facility would be considered a demonstration project, a self-contained, small-scale event — a proposal that’s “never been done anywhere in the country before.”

He added, “As the governor mentioned, what we will do, we will work with the team to get all the fans tested who are coming in beforehand, 6,700 people prior to the game. We will have proof of a negative result prior to entering. We will work with the team and we will do contact tracing afterwards and as I said, this is a demonstration project.”

The problem, Zucker said, is controlling what fans do before entering the stadium. As an example, he noted the thousands of fans who greeted the team at the airport following their win Saturday over the Denver Broncos.

“Thousands gathered without masks and that’s how disease spreads,” he said. “So how do we control that? That is really the question. That’s what we are working on as well and this is all obviously community spirit. We are extremely proud of the Bills. We are all New Yorkers. We work on these things together. We will get through it but that is our plan as a demonstration project, governor, and no one else has done this in the nation before.”

Several NFL teams do allow fans to attend games, but none involve testing for COVID-19.

Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz, in a message with the Erie County Health Department posted to Twitter, said he has not been part of any discussion to allow fans back in the stadium.

“Despite being on several calls with WNY officials for a variety of matters related to the COVID-19 pandemic over the past few days, no such proposal was brought up and additionally, my recent conversations with staff from the Buffalo Bills indicated to me that while the Bills submitted numerous plans to return fans to the stadium in past months, they were unsure whether any of the plans were being actively considered by the state.”

Poloncarz said a decision must be made by no later than the middle of next week “in order to properly prepare.” He also noted that the county does not have the capacity to do rapid testing on 6,700 people.

Robert Mujica, state health commissioner, said any plan would include having fans wear masks and staying apart. Those not following the rules would be ejected, he said.

The state Health Department went to another stadium to see how some of the protocols could work.

“The testing is the newest piece which no one else is doing anywhere in the country, but as the governor points out, this would be the beginning to start to show how you could start events with testing and all of the other mitigation factors we have,” Mujica said. “This would be the first in the nation and the first in the northeast.”