Starting with Tuesday’s test, an additional score is now being published. This new number, dubbed a “health equity metric,” calculates a test positivity rate for the most disadvantaged quartile of census tracts in each county. The positivity rate for this subset of a county’s overall population must also meet the positivity rate requirements for a less-restrictive tier before a county will be allowed to move up.

The state’s health equity score for San Diego County in Tuesday’s report is 6.2 percent, a full 2.7 percentage points greater than the region’s overall positivity rate of 3.5 percent. To qualify for the orange tier, counties must have their positivity rates below 5 percent for two consecutive weeks.