A special cross-Whitehall unit has been set up to counter coronavirus-related disinformation, including from Russia and China, working closely with social media companies to rebut false and inaccurate claims about the disease.

Housed in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the unit will aim to identify false information being deliberately spread online and to establish its scope, impact and whether it needs to be actively countered.

Oliver Dowden, the culture secretary, said defending the country from misinformation and digital interference was a top priority, and that expert teams had been brought together to respond to any threats identified.

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Social media companies have already been trying to tackle the spread of false medical information, with Facebook and Twitter both putting the NHS at the top of search results when UK users search for “coronavirus”.

But that has not stopped false information spreading online, including the incorrect claim that anti-microbial sanitiser is not effective against viruses. In fact, alcohol-based gels are effective in killing Covid-19.

Last week a senior US state department official, Lea Gabrielle, told Congress that Russia was behind “swarms of online, false personas” spreading coronavirus falsehoods and that the “entire ecosystem of Russian disinformation is at play”.

One of the most repeated stories is that the latest strain of coronavirus was created in a western laboratory, or that it was a biological weapon created by the US or someone else. Scientists in fact believe it emerged in humans in China from close contact with a bat, pangolin or other animal.

The disinformation efforts resemble a KGB campaign from the 1980s, known as Operation Infektion, whose key goal was to plant the idea that the CIA or the US military was somehow behind the Aids epidemic.

There have been concerns among social media companies that the US has not always been willing to offer much information to back up its accusations of disinformation, potentially explaining why the British unit is initially focusing on researching the scale of the problem.