Error: Could not create PIO Core Virtual Environment. Please create it manually

I’m trying to install PlatformIO on a new Mac (Catalina) as an extension for VSCode 1.48.2. and I receive the error below. Been searching online for most of the evening but none of the suggested solutions seems to work. I have also tried installing using the “platformio-ide-2.0.0-beta.6.vsix” with the same result.

From the various posts there are lots of references to Python. The default version I have is 2.7 but python3 is installed as well. $PYTHONPATH is empty.

Any ideas?

Error: Could not create PIO Core Virtual Environment. Please create it manually → Redirecting...
Error: Virtualenv Create:
ERROR: File already exists and is not a directory.
Please provide a different path or delete the file.

at t.value (/Users/<user>/.vscode/extensions/platformio.platformio-ide-1.10.0/node_modules/platformio-node-helpers/dist/index.js:1:34077)
at processTicksAndRejections (internal/process/task_queues.js:85:5)