Essential California PRESENTED BY CALIFORNIA ATTRACTIONS AND PARKS ASSOCIATION*   March 3, 2021 Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Wednesday, March 3, and I’m writing from Los Angeles. Let’s start with the good news. More vaccines are coming, and much faster than had been thought. President Biden said Tuesday that the U.S. would have enough COVID-19 vaccines by the end of May to inoculate every American adult, two months earlier than previously expected. [Read the story: “Biden says U.S. will have vaccines faster, prioritizes teachers” in the Los Angeles Times] As my D.C. colleague Chris Megerian reports, the announcement came as Biden administration officials warned that the decline in coronavirus cases appears to be stalling — a broader indication of the same plateauing of cases that Gov. Gavin Newsom warned about Monday in California. The faster vaccination timetable was partly enabled by an unlikely partnership between pharmaceutical rivals. First, some background: Not all drug giants succeeded in the COVID-19 vaccine race — Merck, the nation’s second-largest vaccine-maker, dropped out in January after both its vaccine candidates showed inferior performances in clinical trials. At that point, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines had already been approved for emergency use. Johnson & Johnson joined the field over the weekend, when its vaccine was authorized for inoculations. In an unusual partnership, Merck will now help produce the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in an effort to increase supply more quickly. But even as our enough-vaccine-for-all-takers future inches closer to fruition, scarcity and equity in the distribution process remain major issues in the near term. As my colleagues Ron Lin and Luke Money report, new data continue to show that areas of Los Angeles County hardest hit by the pandemic have low rates of COVID-19 vaccinations, while more affluent communities that have been relatively spared have much higher vaccination rates. The Mercury News reported Tuesday that Sutter Health, a major healthcare provider that serves the greater Bay Area and parts of the Central Valley, may have to cancel or postpone as many as 90,000 vaccine appointments because of a supply shortage.