Over a year into global Covid-19 vaccination efforts, the question of whether vaccine formulas ought to be freely available is still unresolved - and undersupplied countries are turning to workarounds.
Proponents of waiving intellectual property rights owned by pharma giants such as Pfizer and Moderna argue that freeing the technology would lead to faster local production of live-saving vaccines.
But the industry retorts that allowing their inventions to be copied without compensation would discourage medical innovation.
As the Covax vaccine-sharing scheme continues to supply vaccines to undersupplied areas, experts are looking at licensing, technology-sharing and other ways to jumpstart vaccine development in low- and middle-income settings.