GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — Covax, the global distribution of Covid jabs to poorer countries, will soon be integrated into more routine vaccination programs, the non-profit vaccine alliance Gavi said Thursday.

Gavi said its board agreed during a two-day meeting in Geneva this week to phase out Covax after 2023, stressing though that the Covid jabs would still be made available to less well-off countries, alongside other vaccines.

The aim, it said, is "to improve synergies, be more responsive to countries' needs," and to reduce the current burden on countries of having a specialized emergency response in place.

"The support is continuing in 2023," Gavi's head of resource mobilization Marie-Ange Saraka-Yao told AFP.

"Then of course, depending on how the pandemic evolves, the plan will be to really bring it into the more regular program," she said, adding that this was what countries were asking for.

Created in 2000, Gavi provides an array of vaccines to developing countries and leads the Covax initiative, alongside the World Health Organization and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.

The global scheme has so far shipped more than 1.86 billion Covid vaccines to 146 territories, with the focus on providing donor-funded jabs to the 92 weakest economies.