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Current as of August 10, 2020, at 7:45 a.m.
COVID-19 Testing Sites in Florida
  • Drive-Thru Testing sites available are listed by county. Each walk up site can test up to 200 individuals per day. Access the list here.

Safe. Smart. Step-by-Step.

The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity is giving daily updates on Florida’s Reemployment Assistance program: View DEO Dashboard Here.

Florida Department of Health COVID Dashboard: Access dashboard here.

Graphs, Charts, and Real-time Tracking of COVID-19

Data Sources

Data Sources on Social Media

Other Resources


Current Statistics

  • Fatality rate in Florida - 1.6%
  • Covid fatality rate in FL by age group:
  • 15-24 years old - .03%
  • 25-34 years old - .05%
  • 35-44 years old - .20%
  • 45-54 years old - .42%
  • 55-64 years old - 1.2%
  • 65-74 years old - 4.5%
  • 75 and up - 14.2%
  • Seasonal influenza mortality rate in the US (2017 CDC) 18-49 yo - .02%

  • Median age of new Covid cases - 40 years old
  • Emergency department visits w/ COVID-like illness - 36% decrease
  • ICU beds available in Florida - 20%
  • Hospital beds available in Florida - 26%

Vaccine Tracking

Last updated: August 7, 2020 8:28 AM PST

202
vaccines are in development.

24
are now in clinical testing.

The U.S. reported its lowest number of new coronavirus cases in nearly a week, as new infections in some parts of the country trended down.

Fewer than 47,000 new cases were reported in the U.S., while the total number of confirmed cases exceeded five million, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The nation’s death toll neared 163,000.

Thirteen states—Arkansas, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Virginia—have seen their seven-day average of new confirmed cases jump higher than the two-week average as of Aug. 8, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Johns Hopkins data. That held true for 44 states a month earlier, reflecting a decline in reported cases in many parts of the country.

The seven-day average for new cases has been generally trending down for more than two weeks, from more than 67,000 on July 22 to 53,905 on Saturday. Since July 26, the seven-day average has been less than the 14-day average, a signal that case counts have broadly been ticking down. Comparing the one- and two-week averages of new cases helps smooth out anomalies in the data, such as lags in reporting.

Still, the drop in confirmed cases could be tied partly to a drop in testing. In 29 states and the nation’s capital, the seven-day average number of tests per 1,000 people was down Sunday compared with a week earlier, according to Johns Hopkins data. Demand for testing has outstripped supply, even though testing and contact tracing are considered essential by health experts to curb the spread of the virus.

Deaths related to Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, are still trending up in 19 states, including California, Georgia, Illinois and North Carolina, according to the Journal analysis of Johns Hopkins data. U.S. deaths appear to be holding steady, with the seven-day daily death tally average at 1,038, compared with a two-week average of 1,089, the analysis shows.

The virus continued to spread in other countries world-wide, pushing the total number of confirmed cases globally close to the 20 million mark, with more than 730,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins.

India reported more than 60,000 new cases for the fourth day in a row as the country’s total surpassed 2.2 million, according to the Health Ministry. The country’s death toll rose by more than 1,000 to 44,386.

It is now compulsory to wear a face mask on dozens of Paris’s busiest streets as infection rates climb in and around France’s capital. The order took effect at 8 a.m. Monday, and includes popular streets with open-air markets and numerous bars and cafes. The areas include the banks of the Seine and Canal St. Martin, as well as popular sites such as the narrow streets around Montmartre. More open areas, such as the space around the Eiffel Tower, aren’t included.

Russia reported more than 5,000 new cases Monday, pushing its tally to over 892,000. The confirmed death toll rose to more than 15,000 after 70 people died in the previous 24 hours.

Australia’s Victoria state reported 19 new fatalities, marking its deadliest day of the pandemic so far. The national death toll has now surpassed 300. Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews said tough lockdown measures appeared to be bringing greater stability as the state recorded 322 new infections, the lowest number in nearly two weeks, although he said it was too soon to say that infections were plateauing. In neighboring New South Wales, two Sydney schools closed after several students tested positive for the virus.

On Monday, Japan said 1,492 cases were reported nationwide on Sunday, in line with recent days. Meanwhile, a poll by the Yomiuri newspaper brought bad news for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who went ahead with a program to subsidize domestic travel despite a second wave of cases that picked up steam in July.

The poll found 85% of respondents believed it was a bad idea to go through with the travel campaign. More than 75% of respondents said Mr. Abe wasn’t showing sufficient leadership in the fight against the coronavirus, while more than half said they didn’t support his cabinet. The Yomiuri didn’t give a margin of error for its poll.

On Sunday, Mr. Abe said he wanted to avoid declaring a state of emergency so he could strike a balance between blocking the spread of the virus and promoting economic recovery.


More than two dozen experimental coronavirus vaccines are already in human trials from New York to New Delhi, according to the World Health Organization.

Some of the frontrunners were first given to small groups starting around March, and now several are being tested on thousands of volunteers in large-scale phase 3 clinical trials.

Phase 3 testing breaks subjects into randomized groups — those who receive the experimental vaccine, likely with one or two injections spaced several weeks apart, and those who get a placebo, possibly in the form of salt water.

If researchers can show the vaccine is preventing disease without serious side effects, they can ask for regulatory approval to start making and licensing it for mass consumption.
 
Here are some of the top contenders and where they stand in the pipeline:

AstraZeneca/Oxford University: The vaccine, dubbed AZD1222, combines genetic material from coronavirus with an andenovirus found in chimps. It’s now in phase 3 trials after phase 1/2 data showed a strong immune response with only minor side effects, such as headache and fatigue, researchers said. The results, published in the British medical journal The Lancet, said patients who received a second dose fared even better. The vaccine project received a promise of “up to $1.2 billion” in support from the U.S. government in May.

Pfizer/BioNTech: The vaccine, called BNT162b2, began a phase 3 trial July 27 that’s expected to enroll 30,000 participants in the U.S. and abroad. In earlier trials, the vaccine generated antibodies against the coronavirus as well as “concurrent” immune cells called T cells, researchers said. If the phase 3 trial goes well, the companies plan to seek regulatory authorization “as early as October 2020” and supply up to 100 million doses by the end of 2020.

Moderna/National Institutes of Health: The vaccine, named mRNA-1273, also started a phase 3 trial July 27 that plans to enroll 30,000 people. A prior phase 1 trial found it was safe, generally well-tolerated and able to induce antibodies with high levels of virus-neutralizing activity, the NIH said. Once injected, the vaccine directs the body’s cells to express the “spike protein” that coronavirus uses to invade cells. The harmless protein then trains the immune system to create antibodies against the spike before an actual coronavirus infection. The U.S. government has underwritten the project with nearly $1 billion.

Johnson & Johnson: The vaccine, called Ad26.COV2.S, started phase 1/2 clinical trials July 15 that are designed to test the intramuscular shot’s safety and immunogenicity at two dose levels. The company is aiming to begin phase 3 trials in September. It previously received $456 million from the U.S. government to support vaccine development under an existing partnership with its Janssen Vaccines group. On Aug. 5, it announced government officials agreed to pay $1 billion for 100 million doses if the investigational vaccine is approved by the FDA or receives Emergency Use Authorization.

Novavax: The vaccine, known as NVX-CoV2373, uses nanoparticle technology to get a patient’s body to generate antibodies. The antibodies then block the binding of coronavirus spike protein. Data released Tuesday from a phase 1 trial reported robust antibody responses superior to that seen in patients who’ve recovered from COVID-19. The Maryland-based company announced July 7 it was awarded $1.6 billion by the federal government to complete its phase 3 trial and establish large-scale manufacturing to start delivering 100 million doses as early as late 2020.


Worried about catching the new coronavirus at the beach this summer? Don’t be, scientists say—though it might be best to bring a cooler and skip the crowded beachfront bar.

With summer vacations in full swing after months of lockdown, public-health authorities from California and Florida to Spain and the South of France are reporting a pickup in cases of Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Photos of crowded beaches triggered envy for some, worry for others, starting soon after states such as Florida lifted Phase 1 beach restrictions in May.

California and Florida each have reported around 50,000 new cases in the past seven days, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In Europe, young people letting loose are fueling a surge in coronavirus infections that are endangering hard-won gains against the pandemic.

Daily cases in Spain are more than twice the level of a month ago, and in France they are up 60%, according to data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Some governments are warning against holidays in badly affected regions; others are testing incoming vacationers for the virus or requesting that returnees isolate at home for a week or more.

But the beach probably isn’t where most new transmission is occurring, disease experts say. The principal way the new coronavirus spreads from person to person is through droplets of virus-laden moisture that people exhale when they talk, laugh and sneeze. Some researchers suspect finer aerosol particles that hang in the air also play a significant role.

The droplets spread more easily indoors, especially where people are in close contact, talking loudly and breathing heavily. Think of a favorite beachside club or bar, where partygoers are in proximity, shouting at each other over the music—and with limited ventilation.

Yet while the risk of catching the virus outdoors is small, it isn’t zero. Experts suggest a few extra precautions for beachgoers to consider.

Perhaps the most important is deciding where to go in the first place. The risk is higher where the coronavirus is generally more prevalent, and lower where there are fewer daily cases.

Maintain social-distances as far as possible. If the beach you have picked is crowded, maybe try another one. Travel by foot, bike or car, and give public transport a pass. Bring a picnic.

If you are meeting up with friends you haven’t seen in a while, keep in mind that the virus can spread from person to person when there’s close conversation or heated argument.

If you are close enough to smell garlic on someone’s breath, you are too close, said Julian Tang, a physician and associate professor of respiratory sciences at the University of Leicester, England. Save the funny anecdote for a phone call. If one of the five friends laughing in your face has coronavirus, “you’re the one that’s the butt of the joke,” he said.

What about when it’s time to take a dip? Won’t weaving your way from blanket to ocean bring you into too-close contact with people outside your carefully constructed bubble?

If so, wear a mask. Buddy up, so your buddy can swim first while you hold both masks, then swap, said Thomas Russo, chief of the infectious diseases division at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University at Buffalo. And wear a mask and wash your hands when using the beach bathrooms.

“Getting this virus is all about close interactions over time, and interactions without masks,” Prof. Russo said.

On a beach, the droplets have much less chance traveling from one beach blanket to another. The sheer volume of air readily dilutes viral particles. The welcome breeze scudding in off the sea quickly disperses airborne pathogens.

And when exposed to ultraviolet light from the sun, viruses and other bugs tend not to survive very long.

“The environmental conditions of sun, breeze and dryish air mitigate against virus survival,” said Keith Neal, emeritus professor of epidemiology at the University of Nottingham, England.

States are taking differing approaches to reopening and closing during the pandemic, and the economy has been feeling the impact. More than half of the states have instituted statewide mask mandates to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Some state and local jurisdictions have capped bar hours to limit large groups gathering. Schools are in the limelight as fall plans roll out and the first days for most of the country get closer.

These five charts illustrate trends in important industries that help track reopening progress in the U.S.

Direction requests

Driving and walking directions from Apple’s navigation system, Maps, have continued to show little movement since the beginning of July. Requests for both are also still well above pre-pandemic levels, as they have been for most of the pandemic. Walking and driving requests match pandemic highs seen earlier in the summer. Transit direction requests have remained stagnant as well, at about 50% lower than on Jan. 13. Transit direction requests have been unchanging for most of the summer.
Restaurant bookings

Despite some daily variation, U.S. restaurant bookings have remained at nearly 60% less than last year, data from the booking app OpenTable shows. The low bookings reflect continued uncertainty around eating and going out, which has been heightened with public officials expressing concern over the role of bars in spreading the coronavirus. The continued steady uncertainty also shows that while most places allow some form of eating in restaurants, the public does not feel as inclined to go to a restaurant as in previous years.
Hotel occupancy

National hotel occupancy sits at just below 50%, up 1% from a week ago, according to data from the global hospitality research company STR. Comparatively, U.S. occupancy in July 2019 was at 73.8%. The average daily cost for a hotel room continued the trend of rising by about $1 each week, now at just over $100. Norfolk/Virginia Beach, Virginia remained a top travel market – and the only to reach 60% capacity – as it has been for most of the summer. Detroit has stayed at over 50% capacity for another week after having previously experienced capacity below 30%, with San Diego and Philadelphia joining the list of cities reporting hotels filled to more than half capacity. Oahu Island and New Orleans both saw capacity below 30%.
Air travel

The number of passengers traveling through airport security checkpoints is still anywhere between 20% and 30% of what it was last year, data from the Transportation Security Administration shows. Although there were some signs of life in early July with some days nearing 40% of the same days last year, numbers have continued to sit down at about a fourth of prior years. Some airlines have slimmed their offerings in response to international travel restrictions and spikes in coronavirus infection rates, with airline leaders saying they aren’t expecting a recovery until a vaccine is available. The low number of passengers reflects, and is largely driving, the continued financial turbulence the industry is facing.
Home purchases

U.S. home purchases have sat at a 20% increase year over year for another week, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association. However, mortgage applications were down 5.1%. Leaders in the industry say the uncertainty reflects a lack of stability in jobs and the economy due to the pandemic. They expect this level of interest to stay relatively unchanging for the foreseeable future.

When urologist Ranjith Ramasamy first heard about men's telehealth startups Hims and Roman, he was worried.

It was 2017 and Ramasamy, the director of Male Reproductive Medicine and Surgery at the University of Miami, feared he was going to lose patients to telemedicine providers without appropriate certifications or specialty training.

"When I first heard [of these startups], I thought this was going to be bad for the field," Ramasamy tells Inverse.

"This is going to be a disservice to our patients. And more importantly, I thought there was going to be some harm involved on the patient side."

Direct-to-consumer telehealth companies aim to provide accessible, speedy, stigma-free care for everything from erectile dysfunction to herpes — without a physical exam. However, troubled by the risks of mistakes and misdiagnoses, as well as privacy breaches, some physicians and patients have been skeptical.

Then Covid-19 hit. In a pandemic that makes a visit to the doctor riskier than ever before, telehealth has seemingly come to the rescue, promising efficient care from the safety of home.

Out of necessity, many physicians have incorporated telemedicine into their practices — seeing about 50 to 175 times the number of patients virtually than they did pre-pandemic. Hims and Roman are especially experiencing unprecedented demand and expanding their offerings beyond sexual medicine into primary care and mental health.

However, while telemedicine solves some major barriers to care — especially for men — it creates new problems, too. With a serious lack of regulation and data, it's unclear whether telehealth will truly revolutionize health care and live up to its lofty promises. When a doctor's visit goes virtual, what gets lost in translation?

"This whole approach of saying, 'Everything is malpractice with telehealth or I have to see all patients in person' is incorrect," Ramasamy says. "But I also think saying, 'We don't need to see anybody in person. We can do everything in men's health with telehealth' is incorrect. A combined approach is probably what's going to win at the end."

In March, the U.S. government temporarily relaxed telehealth restrictions, enabling Medicare reimbursements, lifted geographic licensing barriers for remote care, and waived privacy rules set by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). On August 3rd, the Trump administration proposed changes extending access to telehealth permanently.

These shifts allowed doctors and patients to communicate via FaceTime, Skype, and Zoom, and in turn, telemedicine boomed.

Before the pandemic, telehealth usage was at the fringe of care consumption, making up about 3 billion dollars of health care spending in 2019. Now, analysts predict virtual visits could account for up to 250 billion, or about 20 percent, of what Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial insurers spend on outpatient, office, and home health visits.

Marc Goldstein, a urologist and the director of the Center for Male Reproductive Medicine and Microsurgery at the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell Medical Center, tells Inverse his first reaction to men's telehealth companies was resolute: “This is malpractice.”

"There are relatively rare exceptions where a patient could be given a prescription without an actual physical exam," Goldstein tells Inverse, "but that's really the exception, not the rule."

The pandemic has forced doctors like Goldstein and Ramasamy to shake off their reservations and start seeing their own patients virtually. That these visits proved to be ultimately useful shocked them and suggested that telehealth has utility for certain men’s health conditions, screenings, or follow-up visits.

Goldstein was "pleasantly surprised" by how much of a complete medical history he could get through telemedicine, while Ramasamy now thinks "telemedicine is one of the few positives that came out of the Covid-19 pandemic."

It's not about replacing primary care docs or specialists, the physicians say. It’s about offering a supplement to in-person care — carefully and at patients' convenience.

Patrick Carroll is a family physician and the chief medical officer of Hims and Hers, both operated by Hims, Inc. He sees what's happening presently as the "inflection point of telemedicine."

"Even traditional providers who may not have bought into telemedicine before and actually had to deliver it that way have realized that, 'Wow, this is a very useful, powerful modality that I need to incorporate into my traditional practice,'" Carroll tells Inverse.

Prior to Hims and Roman launching, urologist Peter Stahl grew increasingly aware of the "overly burdensome" nature of his practice. People were waiting weeks for an appointment, then waiting an hour at the office for an "eight-minute visit," Stahl recalls.

"It's not that the care wasn't good," Stahl tells Inverse. "Everything was getting done, but it was very hectic and burdensome to patients."

Stahl is the director of male reproductive and sexual medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center and a urology advisor to Hims. He sees patients in New York City, but these lags in care are prevalent elsewhere. Eighty percent of the rural United States is estimated to be medically underserved, creating "health care deserts" where primary care doctors, surgeons, and specialists can be hard to find.

Researchers forecast this problem will deepen in the next decade, predicting a shortage of up to 122,000 primary care physicians by 2032.

Physicians and specialists like Stahl are stretched thin, seeing up to 50 patients each day. That means the time of patient visits shrinks, and both doctors and patients can feel dissatisfied with care.

"You come out of medical school and you are very hopeful and excited about having like a really long, detailed 30-minute or 60-minute visit with someone that includes a lot of talking and the physical exam," Stahl explains. "And at least in some aspects of subspecialty care, the reality just looks a lot different."

That's where telehealth comes in. Telemedicine – whether it's asynchronous (a health care provider reviews messages, images, and data shared by a patient, then diagnoses and prescribes an issue a la the Hims/ Roman model) or synchronous (a real-time telephone or video patient visit with a provider) — can restructure both patients' and clinicians' time.

In an ideal world, Stahl says, telehealth can enable providers to practice the kind of medicine they once dreamed about: in-depth, in-person visits unburdened by simple, straightforward cases. Ultimately, the type of visits patients want, where people get what they need "in the most efficient way possible," Stahl says.

Carroll, the Hims and Hers CMO, was drawn to telehealth because he also wanted to provide more convenient care for patients.

"It is access to care 24 hours a day, seven days a week; it's really on the patient's or customer's schedule and not on the doctor's schedule," Carroll says. "It provides the opportunity to reach people in a very frictionless, convenient way and to offer very high-quality services.”

While these telehealth startups may be convenient, they may not be cost-effective. While patients utilizing telehealth services through their doctor can now get reimbursed by their insurance, those currently relying on Hims, Roman, and other direct-to-consumer startups will not. These companies still say their services save patients money and time, enabling them to skip an in-person visit or trip to the pharmacy and avoid copays.

An online visit with Roman costs $15, while Hims charges a membership fee from $10 to $17. However, as Bloomberg reported in 2019, the medications prescribed through these platforms are often marked up, sometimes as much as six times the typical price of the same drug.

Roman sells a 20 mg dose of generic Viagra for $2, while Hims sells it for $3 a pill. Pharmacies buy the drug for about 15 cents a pill, and patients can find them at drugstores through online discount programs for as cheap as 41 cents a pill.

Although telehealth has been around for years, it hasn't been accessed this widely before. To date, there haven't been any comprehensive studies or analyses of which conditions are best treated by telemedicine. There also haven't been any large-scale studies documenting error rates of telehealth platforms. Whether telemedicine will truly streamline health care remains to be seen.

"This is a whole new area, and they're sneaking in before there are any regulations," Goldstein says. Goldstein adds that, despite his own positive experience using telehealth in his practice, he and his colleagues are "appalled" at what is going on. Goldstein plans to facilitate a specialty-wide discussion about how to make men's telehealth safer.

"You cannot prescribe anything for the patient regarding his reproductive function, whether it's erectile dysfunction or testicular dysfunction, without examining the testicles, without examining the organ that's responsible for fertility and responsible for testosterone level," Goldstein says.

Goldstein is increasingly confident treating patients through Cornell's telemedicine system, even without seeing patients in person. But he questions whether prescribing doctors on Hims or Roman have the experience and training to do a thorough job. At Hims, prescribing physicians are typically primary care doctors or nurse practitioners who follow Hims' clinical sexual medicine guidelines, but they are not required to be specialized in the conditions they are treating.

When asked about the level of oversight, Stahl said he can't think of any clinical guidelines related to treating specific conditions via telehealth. He’s working on drafting some broad-use urology telemedicine guidelines now and argues the physical exam should be a test employed thoughtfully, in specific cases when "you're suspicious or when it's warranted."

Stahl and Carroll say that Hims' repetitive, standardized nature enables detailed quality control. In the past year, Carroll and his team have been able to review 8,000 patient encounters and an automated system fastidiously tracks physicians’ prescribing and diagnostic behavior. If anything is awry, the physician is required to complete additional training, and sometimes, disinvited to see patients on the platform.

"It's sort of the pilot with a checklist mode, where really there's no option not to ask all the right questions and get all the right safety information — because you're not asking the questions. The technology is asking questions and demanding answers to them," Stahl says. In contrast, synchronous face-to-face telehealth is currently "only as good as the doctor providing it," he argues.

Meanwhile, Ramasamy theorizes that the "cookie-cutter approach" utilized by many telehealth platforms relying on questionnaires and verifications of patient answers could apply to the majority of patients. But he argues there's still a risk of missing something important to diagnosis or treatment — something that would have been caught in-person.

Internist Vishal Khetpal also questions what may be lost when a doctor's visit goes virtual. He is a resident physician at Brown University Medicine and the author of a 2019 telehealth opinion piece in Undark.

Khetpal and Ramasamy agree that, ideally, telehealth would be optional after patients and providers connect in person if deemed medically appropriate. Patient-doctor relationships are optimal when there's some familiarity.

"Reading a room and picking up body language is so important, and I worry how we’ll compensate in telemedicine interfaces," Khetpal tells Inverse.

Khetpal also worries asynchronous telehealth like Hims and Roman may lead to the gradual fragmentation of primary care.

"As an internist, I find it extraordinarily difficult to take apart the diagnoses of my patients in the way that these companies do with their products. They effectively are all interwoven with one another," Khetpal says.

"An algorithm may be able to determine whether or not it’s safe for a patient to start a new medication, but I think a person is still better equipped to connect the entirety of a patient’s general health to the specific health problem and design an actionable plan that is personalized to the patient."

Every physician Inverse consulted acknowledged that telemedicine is appropriate for some, not all medical issues.

If you're thinking of trying telehealth, it's recommended to investigate and learn about the health provider you are consulting. Check out their specialty, background, and experience treating conditions or symptoms you are dealing with, Ramasamy advises.

Where telehealth is particularly useful, Khetpal says, is counseling for issues like substance use, chronic medical conditions, and preventative screenings. And, ideally, these sessions "involve a patient and physician who know each other and already have a good underlying relationship.”

As long as the Covid-19 pandemic surges on, telehealth isn’t likely to slow down. In 2019, just 11 percent of Americans reported using telehealth. Now, it's 46 percent of Americans. As Carroll notes, this is the inflection point for telemedicine. It's also the point where telehealth companies will have to decide whether or not they want to change their services to satisfy the old guard.

"The Covid-19 pandemic has really just forced mass exposure for doctors and patients to telehealth," Stahl says.

"Patients and doctors alike are recognizing that telehealth certainly has a place in medicine. I think that it's never going to be the same."

Faizel Khan was being told by the news media and his own mayor that the protests in his hometown were peaceful, with “a block party atmosphere.”

But that was not what he saw through the windows of his Seattle coffee shop. He saw encampments overtaking the sidewalks. He saw roving bands of masked protesters smashing windows and looting.

Young white men wielding guns would harangue customers as well as Mr. Khan, a gay man of Middle Eastern descent who moved here from Texas so he could more comfortably be out. To get into his coffee shop, he sometimes had to seek the permission of self-appointed armed guards to cross a border they had erected.

“They barricaded us all in here,” Mr. Khan said. “And they were sitting in lawn chairs with guns.”

For 23 days in June, about six blocks in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood were claimed by left-wing demonstrators and declared police-free. Protesters hailed it as liberation — from police oppression, from white supremacy — and a catalyst for a national movement.

In the wake of the killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police, the Black Lives Matter movement is calling to defund the police, arguing that the criminal justice system is inherently racist.

Leaders in many progressive cities are listening. In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced a plan to shift $1 billion out of the police budget. The Minneapolis City Council is pitching a major reduction, and the Seattle City Council is pushing for a 50 percent cut to Police Department funding. (The mayor said that plan goes too far.)

Some even call for “abolishing the police” altogether and closing down precincts, which is what happened in Seattle.

That has left small-business owners as lonely voices in progressive areas, arguing that police officers are necessary and that cities cannot function without a robust public safety presence. In Minneapolis, Seattle and Portland, Ore., many of those business owners consider themselves progressive, and in interviews they express support for the Black Lives Matter movement. But they also worry that their businesses, already debilitated by the coronavirus pandemic, will struggle to survive if police departments and city governments cannot protect them.

On Capitol Hill, business crashed as the Seattle police refused to respond to calls to the area. Officers did not retake the region until July 1, after four shootings, including two fatal ones.

Now a group of local businesses owners — including a locksmith, the owner of a tattoo parlor, a mechanic, the owners of a Mexican restaurant and Mr. Khan — is suing the city. The lawsuit claims that “Seattle’s unprecedented decision to abandon and close off an entire city neighborhood, leaving it unchecked by the police, unserved by fire and emergency health services, and inaccessible to the public” resulted in enormous property damage and lost revenue.

The Seattle lawsuit — and interviews with shop owners in cities like Portland and Minneapolis — underscores a key question: Can businesses still rely on local governments, which are now rethinking the role of the police, to keep them safe? The issue is especially tense in Seattle, where the city government not only permitted the establishment of a police-free zone, but provided infrastructure like concrete barriers and portable toilets to sustain it.

The economic losses that businesses suffered during the recent tumult are significant: One community relief fund in Minneapolis, where early protests included vandalism and arson, has raised $9 million for businesses along the Lake Street corridor, a largely Latino and East African business district. “We asked the small businesses what they needed to cover the damage that insurance wasn’t paying, and the gap was around $200 million,” said Allison Sharkey, the executive director of the Lake Street Council, which is organizing the fund. Her own office, between a crafts market and a Native American support center, was burned down in the protests...

The impact of the occupation on Cafe Argento, Mr. Khan’s coffee shop on Capitol Hill, has been devastating. Very few people braved the barricades set up by the armed occupiers to come in for his coffee and breakfast sandwiches. Cars coming to pick up food orders would turn around. At two points, he and his workers felt scared and called 911. “They said they would not come into CHOP,” said Mr. Khan, referring to one of the names that protesters gave to the occupied Capitol Hill area. “It was lawless.”

He had to start chipping in for private security, a hard thing to do when his business had already been hurt by the coronavirus.

But he considers himself lucky — and he was. Even weeks after the protests, blocks of his previously bustling neighborhood remained boarded up and covered in shattered glass. Many business owners are scared to speak out, Mr. Khan said, because of worries that they would be targeted further.

One mid-July morning in the neighborhood, workers in orange vests were mopping off the sidewalks and power-spraying graffiti off the sides of buildings. Two window repair guys said they had their hands full for weeks.

Shattered street lamps were being unscrewed and replaced.

A confusing array of security teams wandered around, armed with handguns and rifles. Some wore official-looking private security uniforms. Others wore casual clothes and lanyards identifying their affiliation with Black Lives Matter. A third group wore all black with no identifying labels and declined to name their group affiliation.

When a tall man in a trench coat and hiking boots walked over to question Mr. Khan, the man spread his coat open, revealing several pistols on harnesses around his chest and waist. He presented a badge on a lanyard that read “Black Lives Matter Community Patrol.”

His name is Rick Hearns and he identified himself as a longtime security guard and mover who is now a Black Lives Matter community guard, in charge of several others. Local merchants pay for his protection, he said as he handed out his business card. (Mr. Khan said he and his neighbors are now paying thousands of dollars a month for protection from Iconic Global, a Washington State-based private security contractor.)

Mr. Hearns has had bad experiences with the police in his own life. He says he wants police reform, but he was appalled by the violent tactics and rhetoric he witnessed during the occupation.

He blamed the destruction and looting on “opportunists,” but also said that much of the damage on Capitol Hill came from a distinct contingent of violent, armed white activists. “It’s antifa,” he said. “They don’t want to see the progress we’ve made. They want chaos...”

Antifa, which stands for anti-fascist, is a radical, leaderless leftist political movement that uses armed, violent protest as a method to create what supporters say is a more just and equitable country. They have a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest, including the current protests in Portland.

When the occupation in Seattle started in early June, Mayor Jenny Durkan seemed almost amused. “We could have the Summer of Love,” she said.

After President Trump took aim at the governor of Washington State and Seattle’s mayor on June 11, Ms. Durkan defended the occupation on Twitter as “a peaceful expression of our community’s collective grief and their desire to build a better world,” she wrote, pointing to the “food trucks, spaghetti potlucks, teach-ins, and movies.”

The lawsuit by the small-business owners, filed by the firm Calfo Eakes on June 24, seizes on such language, pointing out that the city knew what was happening and provided material support for the occupation.

Matthew Ploszaj, a Capitol Hill resident, is one of the complainants. He said his apartment building, blocks from Mr. Khan’s shop, was broken into four times during the occupation. The Seattle Police were called each time and never came to his apartment, according to Mr. Ploszaj. When he and another resident called the police after one burglary, they told him to meet them outside the occupation zone, about eight blocks away. He and other residents spent nights at a friend’s house outside the area during the height of the protests.

The employees of Bergman’s Lock and Key say they were followed by demonstrators with baseball bats. Cure Cocktail, a local bar and charcuterie, said its workers were asked by protesters to pledge loyalty to the movement: “Are you for the CHOP or are you for the police?” they were asked, according to the lawsuit.

The business owners also found that trying to get help from the Seattle Police, who declined to comment for this article, made them targets of activists.

Across from Cafe Argento is a funky old auto repair shop called Car Tender run by John McDermott, a big soft-spoken man. On June 14, Mr. McDermott was driving his wife home from their anniversary dinner when he received a call from a neighbor who saw someone trying to break into his shop.

Mr. McDermott and his 27-year-old son, Mason, raced over. A man who was inside the shop, Mr. McDermott said, had emptied the cash drawer and was in the midst of setting the building on fire. Mr. McDermott said he and his son wrestled the man down and planned to hold him until the police arrived. But officers never showed up. A group of several hundred protesters did, according to Mr. McDermott, breaking down the chain-link fence around his shop and claiming that Mr. McDermott had kidnapped the man.

“They started coming across the fence — you see all these beautiful kids, a mob but kids — and they have guns and are pointing them at you and telling you they’re going to kill you,” Mr. McDermott said. “Telling me I’m the K.K.K. I’m not the K.K.K.”

The demonstrators were livestreaming the confrontation. Mr. McDermott’s wife watched, frantically calling anyone she could think of to go help him.

Later, Mr. McDermott’s photo and shop address appeared on a website called Cop Blaster, whose stated aim is to track police brutality but also has galleries of what it calls “Snitches” and “Cop Callers.” The McDermotts were categorized as both of those things on the website, which warned they should “keep their mouths shut.”

Many of the listings include names and addresses of people who are said to have called the police. Since the Cop Blaster post went up, Mr. McDermott’s shop has received so many harassing phone calls and messages that some employees have had to take time off...

Many protesters who remained in early July were milling around a small tent encampment on a lawn at Seattle Central College, some with rifles slung over their shoulders. The smell of weed drifted through. The streets were full of moving trucks.

The crowds were gone, but every now and then, the demonstrators gave speeches about the importance of disbanding the police. Sometimes the activists spoke about what went wrong with the occupation. One young woman on a bullhorn argued to passers-by that the police left too quickly and that a sustainable police-free region would have to be built more slowly.

These days, storefronts in the neighborhood remain boarded up, covered in Black Lives Matter signs and graffiti. Demonstrators still hold evening protests, albeit smaller and quieter than before. But the businesses remain on edge...