BRITAIN is “past the peak” of the coronavirus, Boris Johnson has announced, as he appealed to the public to “keep going” to avoid the health and economic disaster of a second peak of the epidemic.

Leading his first Downing St press briefing since falling ill from the virus at the start of the month, the Prime Minister said the figures showed the country was now on a “downward slope” and he praised the public for its effort and sacrifice in helping to avoid an “uncontrollable and catastrophic” outbreak.

Nonetheless, the daily death toll across the UK in all settings rose by 674 to 26,711.

Pointing to the forthcoming three-week review of the lockdown, Mr Johnson said a huge amount of work had been taking place on drawing up an exit strategy.

He announced: "I will be setting out a comprehensive plan next week to explain how we can get our economy moving, our children back to school and into childcare, and thirdly how we can travel to work and make life in the workplace safer.

"In short, how we can continue to suppress the disease and at the same time restart the economy."

Mr Johnson went on: "What you are going to get next week is really a road map, a menu of options; the dates and times of each individual measure will be very much driven by where we are in the epidemic, what the data is really saying and we are getting in a lot more data every day now and in the course of the next few days."

And, following the Scottish Government’s advice on people wearing face coverings in restricted public spaces, the PM said: “What SAGE[the UK Government’s group of expert advisers] is saying, and I certainly agree, is that as part of coming out of the lockdown face coverings will be useful both for epidemiological reasons but also for giving people confidence they can go back to work and you are going to be hearing more about that and that kind of thing next week.”

The PM told the press briefing: “We have come through the peak or rather we’ve come under what could have been a vast peak as though we’ve been going through some huge alpine tunnel and we can now see the sunlight and pasture ahead of us.

“And so it is vital that we do not now lose control and run slap into a second and even bigger mountain.”

During the briefing there was a video on the need to keep the reproduction rate, R, below one to avoid a second wave of infection. Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, suggested the rate was somewhere between 0.6 and 0.9 but was at different levels in different parts of the country.

He made clear the number of people being hospitalised still needed to be driven down.

But he pointed out: "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."

On a personal note, Mr Johnson said: “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 said he was “very, very lucky” and had received “wonderful care,” adding: “Let’s be frank, tragically thousands of people have been less fortunate than I was and that’s why the objective of this Government is to save lives across the country…”

The PM addressed the two areas of highest pressure and deepest controversy for the Government: Personal Protective Equipment and testing.

He said: “I’m not going to minimise the logistical problems we have faced in getting the right protective gear to the right people at the right time, both in the NHS and in care homes or the frustrations that we have experienced in expanding the numbers of tests.

“But what I can tell you is that everyone responsible for tackling these problems whether in Government or the NHS, or Public Health England, local authorities, we are throwing everything at it, heart and soul, night and day to get it right and we will get it right and we are making huge progress.”

He insisted he would not underrate the work and the achievement of those who were dealing with global shortages in a global pandemic.

“They are rising to a challenge we have never seen in our lifetimes,” declared Mr Johnson.

He insisted the country had succeeded in the first and most important test of the crisis: avoiding the NHS being overwhelmed.

“No patient went without a ventilator, no patient was deprived of intensive care. We have five of the seven projected Nightingale wards. And 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,” explained the PM.

He also repeated his argument that the Government had done the "right thing at the right time" by introducing the coronavirus lockdown when it did.

Mr Johnson stressed it was "completely right" to make the lockdown coincide with the peak of the epidemic.

But, pressed that the UK was on course to have the worst death toll in Europe, he said he wanted to "wait until the end [of the pandemic] before making international comparisons" between the UK's coronavirus death total and other nations.

"The only real test, the only real comparison is going to be possible at the end of the epidemic and you look at total excess deaths.

"I genuinely think when I look back at what the UK has done and, by the way when we put in the lockdown it was earlier in the curve of our epidemic than it was relatively speaking in France, Italy and Spain, we did the right measures at the right time."

Professor Chris Whitty, England’s Chief Medical Officer, said comparing the UK's coronavirus death toll with other countries was a "fruitless exercise".

Any comparison, he argued, should be done with caution because different countries measured their coronavirus cases in different ways.

He said lessons must be learned after the epidemic had passed but there was a long way to go until it had run its course.

"We are nowhere near the end of this epidemic. We are through - and it's very good as the PM said - the first phase of this.

"There is a very long way to run for every country in the world on this and let's not go charging into who's won and who's lost, let's try to take it quite carefully.

"Every country measures its covid cases in a slightly different way, so comparing one with one another is largely a fruitless exercise," he added.