The Foreign Office’s coronavirus chief condemned an uptick in antisemitism related to the virus on Sunday.

Jon Benjamin is the Director of COVID-19 Operations at the Foreign Office, and previously served as British Ambassador in Accra and Santiago.

“So much of this corona-related #antisemitism now infesting our [timelines],” Mr Benjmain said, “it’s a Jewish/Zionist/Israeli plot say the conspiracy theorists. Just sad, hateful nonsense.”

He quoted British Jewish comedian David Baddiel: “Conspiracy theories are how idiots get to feel like intellectuals.”

Mr Benjamin, who is Jewish, made the comment in response to an antisemitic tweeted that coronavirus was “a conspiracy of Jews for family planning”.

Benjamin has been the Director of the Foreign Office's Diplomatic Academy since 2017.  

The Campaign Against Antisemitism, which Mr Benjamin also retweeted, has said that “As COVID-19 spreads across the globe, the virus of antisemitism mutates to keep pace”  

Reports by the Anti-Defamation League, the French Representative Council of Jewish Institutions, and the Israeli Strategic Affairs Ministry in recent days have all pointed to an increase in antisemitism over coronavirus.

The Anti-Defamation League said that there had been “a surge in messaging that Jews and/or Israel manufactured or spread the coronavirus to advance their global control.”

Coronavirus has been primarily associated with an uptick in racism against those of East Asian and increasingly, of Italian-descent.

Coronavirus was first identified in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December and has since spread globally, particularly in Italy.