Why doesn't VSCode activate conda before starting the debugger?

When I start the debugger in VSCode, the conda environment only gets activated after the debugging process has stopped with a "Missing required dependencies" import error. Immediately restarting the debugger works fine then.

This problem occurs with the Anaconda "base" and other environments.

Test code: import_pandas.py

    import pandas
    print("Pandas import succeeded!")

VSCode Python Debug Console:

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.16299.1146]
(c) 2017 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\peter\demo>cd c:\Users\peter\demo && 
    cmd /C "set "PYTHONIOENCODING=UTF-8"&& 
    set "PYTHONUNBUFFERED=1"&& 
    C:\Users\peter\AppData\Local\Anaconda3\python.exe 
        c:/Users/peter/.vscode/extensions/ms-python.python-2019.5.18678/pythonFiles/ptvsd_launcher.py 
            --default --client --host localhost --port 49530 
c:\Users\peter\demo\import_pandas.py "

...

ImportError: Missing required dependencies ['numpy']

C:\Users\peter\demo>C:/Users/peter/AppData/Local/Anaconda3/Scripts/activate

(base) C:\Users\peter\demo>conda activate base

(base) C:\Users\peter\demo>

Note that conda gets automatically activated after the debugger stopped.

Once after the environment got activated, the debug process doesn't fail anymore:

(base) C:\Users\peter\demo>cd c:\Users\peter\demo && 
    cmd /C "set "PYTHONIOENCODING=UTF-8"&& 
    set "PYTHONUNBUFFERED=1"&& 
    C:\Users\peter\AppData\Local\Anaconda3\python.exe 
        c:/Users/peter/.vscode/extensions/ms-python.python-2019.5.18678/pythonFiles/ptvsd_launcher.py 
        --default --client --host localhost --port 49544 
c:\Users\peter\demo\import_pandas.py "

Pandas import succeeded!

Is there any way to have conda activated prior to calling the debugger for the first time?