Boris Johnson tonight said face coverings will be a "useful" tool for coming out of the coronavirus lockdown.
The Prime Minister gave the first clear suggestion that people across the UK will be advised to cover their faces in public to help slow the spread of the virus.
He said further information would only be confirmed next week.
People in Scotland have already been advised to cover their faces in some public places.
Scientific advice to the UK government from SAGE says masks have a weak effect, if worn by someone with Covid-19, in stopping them passing the disease to others.
Advice from SAGE was handed to UK ministers last week, and they are still deciding how to act on it.
However, today the Prime Minister appeared to support the idea of advising people to cover their faces in public.
He told the Downing Street daily press conference: "What I think SAGE is saying, and what I certainly agree with is that as part of coming out of the lockdown, I do think that face coverings will be useful both for epidemiological reasons but also for giving people confidence they can go back to work.
"But you'll be hearing more about that thing next week."
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has been demanding that the Government change its advice for weeks.
Mr Khan said: “I am pleased that the Prime Minister has said that non-medical face coverings will play an important role as we eventually look to lift lockdown restrictions. This is something I and others have been pushing the Government to change the guidance on.”
It came as Mr Johnson said the UK is "past the peak" of the coronavirus outbreak - and that he will reveal a comprehensive plan on coming out of the lockdown next week.
At the Prime Minister's first appearance at the daily coronavirus briefing for more than a month he declared that the UK was officially past the peak of Covid-19 infections.
"At no stage has our NHS been overwhelmed, no patient went without a ventilator, no patient was deprived of intensive care, we have five of the seven projected Nightingale wards," he said.
"It is thanks to that massive collective effort to shield the NHS that we avoided an uncontrollable and catastrophic epidemic where the reasonable worst-case scenario was 500,000 deaths.
"I can confirm today that for the first time we are past the peak of this disease.
"We are past the peak and on the downward slope."
There have been 26,711 deaths in all settings in the UK during the pandemic, Mr Johnson announced, an increase of 674 since yesterday.
He said that UK had avoided the 'reasonable worst case scenario' of 500,000 deaths.
The Prime Minister, whose fiancee Carrie Symonds gave birth to a son on Wednesday, said: "I want to thank everybody who has been doing such a good job in my absence, and I want to thank the NHS for so much - including getting me back here and, I might add, a very much happier hospital visit yesterday."
He added: "Families every day are continuing to lose loved ones before their time, we grieve for them and with them, but as we grieve, we are strengthened in our resolve to defeat this virus to get this whole country back to health, back on its feet."
Today Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK’s chief scientific adviser, said scientists think the R rate - the rate at which the disease spreads - is currently between 0.6 and 0.9 in the UK, meaning every person is infecting less than one other person with the virus.
He noted however that it may be higher and lower than that range in different parts of the country.
Sir Patrick said there has been a decrease in the number of cases, as well as a decrease in the number of deaths from Covid-19.
He said: "The number of new cases is down, that's turning into fewer admissions, fewer people in hospital, fewer people in intensive care and we're beginning to see that decrease in deaths."
Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty said that while the progress was good there was no answer about what the number should remain at for lockdown measures to end.
He said: "There isn't a perfect answer to what the R should be, but the wrong answer is anything above one".
