There have been plenty of conspiracy theories to come out of the coronavirus pandemic.

But the latest worrying one, a documentary called Plandemic, is having some serious staying power as thousands of believers battle with social media sites to keep the video online.

"The Hidden Agenda Behind Covid-19," the documentary's description reads. "Was Covid-19 a plan?"

YouTube and Facebook continue to delete copies of the 26-minute video, saying it breaks their "community guidelines", but versions of it keep popping up.

Filmmaker Mikki Willis anticipated the video getting deleted, and encouraged his followers on Facebook to keep sharing it.

"Be brave. Share this video far and wide," he wrote, adding a Vimeo link of the footage "should this video be removed from this platform".

The video has also since been deleted by Vimeo.

The movie, which claims the coronavirus pandemic is part of an elaborate plan by big pharma and billionaires to enforce globally mandated vaccinations, features Dr Judy Mikovitz as its main spokeswoman.

Dr Mikovitz, once a practising medical researcher, spent five days in jail for allegedly stealing material from a lab and had her research on chronic fatigue discredited in 2011.

• Covid19.govt.nz: The Government's official Covid-19 advisory website

She is also a well-known anti-vax spokeswoman, despite claiming she is not in the film.

Dr Mikovitz blames Italy's horrific experience with coronavirus on a flu vaccine they received in 2019.

"Italy has a very old population. They're very sick with inflammatory disorders," she says.

"They got, at the beginning of 2019, an untested, new form of influenza vaccine that had four different strains of influenza including the highly pathogenic H1N1."

Dr Mikovitz takes aim at Bill Gates in the film, whose charitable foundation is one of the biggest funders of the World Health Organisation.

"This is the crime behind letting somebody like Bill Gates with billions of dollars, nobody elected him, he has no medical background, he has no expertise, but we let people like that have a voice in this country while we destroy the lives of millions of people," she says.

Health authorities and global experts on zoonotic diseases – ones spread from animals to humans – have repeatedly shut down suggestions coronavirus came from a laboratory, saying its most likely source was a bat.

However, when Dr Mikovitz was asked if she believes the virus was "created" in a laboratory, she claims to know exactly where the virus came from.

"I wouldn't use the word created but you can't say naturally occurring if it was by way of the laboratory," she says.

"So it's very clear this virus was manipulated ... and studied in a lab where the animals were taken into the lab and this was what was released. Whether deliberate or not.

"I'm sure it occurred between the North Carolina laboratories in Fort Detrick and the Wuhan laboratory."

Dr Mikovitz is referring to the research relationship between scientists in the US and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, whose collaboration has long been known.

Thousands of people online are pushing to get the video off the internet and the theories in the film continue to be debunked.

"What's gone wrong with our education, what's gone wrong with our common sense?" Dr Zubin Damania asks.

"This video is filled with the worst kind of conspiracy nonsense ... this is crazy. Don't waste your time watching it, don't waste your time sharing it, I can't believe I'm wasting my time talking about it."

Use critical thinking when being fed conspiracy theory videos like #Plandemic. None of it is even remotely true and is not backed up by any evidence.

— Jim Chaffee (@JimChaffeeEM) May 7, 2020