Clothes factories to start producing millions of free face masks for working Brits as lockdown eases

CLOTHES factories are to start churning out millions of cloth face coverings for Brits to wear to work.

Ministers are in secret talks with manufacturers to provide the masks for everyday use as part of the fight against coronavirus.

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Under the government plans, the new cloth masks will be issued to all key workers for free, from doctors and nurses to teachers.

The revelation comes ahead of a planned announcement on masks by Boris Johnson on Sunday, The Sun can also reveal.

In a major change of Government policy, the PM will ask people to wear the new cloth masks on public transport and in the workplace where social distancing is difficult.

Boris sees wearing masks as a key confidence-building device to persuade nervous Brits to go back to work, No10 insiders say.

The request – as lay he out his ‘unlockdown’ roadmap – will not come into effect immediately, but when it is deemed safe to start easing the current tough Covid-19 restrictions, expected from the last week of May.

‘CONFIDENCE-BUILDING DEVICE’

To guard against concern that the instruction could see a run on medical grade masks and strip the NHS of vital PPE supplies, Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove has been tasked to lead another major new industrial mobilization.

The Sun has learned that contracts are about to be signed with manufacturers abroad to ship in an initial large supply of cloth masks.

Talks are also underway with underemployed British clothes makers to switch their idle supply lines to making the masks.

Led by Lord Agnew, the plan will see UK manufacturers soon pushing out “many millions a week”.

A Whitehall source said last night: “The domestic effort on face coverings is sensible contingency planning to ensure that demand for medical grade PPE is not overwhelmed if the advice were to change”.

AP:Associated Press

After a lengthy debate, experts on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies have told ministers that cloth masks could help limit the spread of coronavirus.

Instead of preventing people from catching the disease, they are deemed to be useful in stopping people already infected with it from expelling droplets from their mouth and nose.

Giving evidence to MPs, the government’s Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance told the Commons Health Committee: “Masks may have a marginal positive effect in that situation, or face coverings of some sort might do”.

He explained: “The evidence is that essentially a minute at two metres’ contact is about the same risk as six seconds at one metre, so that gives you some idea of why the two metres becomes important.

“And the risk at one metre is about 10 to 30 times higher than the risk at two metres, so the distancing is an important part of this. Where, therefore, masks may have a role is in situations where distancing is not possible.”

Signalling his thinking on masks last week, Mr Johnson said they “will be useful” when Britain begins to emerge from lockdown.

But Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab also voiced fears about how the move could hurt the NHS without a major new supply of them.

Mr Raab told the daily No10 press conference: “We do not want to detract from the supply of masks and PPE going to frontline workers”.

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