The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement is the primary multilateral legal agreement used to outline international intellectual property rights. During past global health emergencies, such as the HIV/AIDS crisis, TRIPS was invoked to allow pharmaceutical treatments to become accessible to lower income countries through intellectual property flexibilities, such as compulsory licensing. However, during the recent COVID-19 pandemic, TRIPS was not invoked for the distribution of newly developed vaccines. Rather, vaccine courses were distributed to countries through multilateral agreements with manufacturers, donations, the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX), or the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT). In this research, vaccine distribution to countries of varying income level by population coverage were observed and evaluated to determine whether these methods of delivery were successful in replacing the TRIPS flexibilities. Through a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, including statistical analyses on correlations between population coverage, modes of vaccine delivery, and GDP per capita, the nuances of the tradeoffs between intellectual property protection for inventors and accessibility of life-saving inventions to civilians were investigated. Research findings suggest that the implemented vaccine delivery systems used during the COVID-19 pandemic were not effective in securing equitable access to the vaccines, calling into question whether implementing TRIPS flexibilities would have allowed for greater access to certain populations.