When Tara Jane Langston was hospitalised with coronavirus, she and her family were confronted with a terrible ordeal. And then the trauma was compounded by online trolls who flooded the family’s inbox with messages accusing them of a hoax.

Richard Langston, Tara Jane’s husband, said unfounded online claims that a widely shared video in which she described her experience was bogus had made the experience even more upsetting. “It made me question humanity,” Langston said from his home in Middlesex, where he is self-isolating with his children. “How could people be that negative? It just doesn’t make sense.”

Langston said his 39-year-old wife was a fit and healthy mother of two before she contracted the virus and was hospitalised in intensive care.

She started feeling unwell a week last Monday and went to the hospital after calling 111, Langston explained. The hospital staff told her she had a chest infection and she was prescribed antibiotics and sent home. Langston likened his wife’s condition to a pendulum, where she would swing from getting better to feeling worse.

They again called 111 and an ambulance was sent when her conditioned significantly worsened. “It was a horrific and terrifying ordeal,” he said.

After being diagnosed with Covid-19 on Sunday, Tara Jane sent a video to a Whatsapp group with her colleagues. Her sister, Nicole Poppy Keatley, said: “One of the people she works with shared it. Never asked her or told her it went viral while she was in her hospital bed and didn’t know till the next day.”

In the video, which has been viewed tens of thousands of times, Langston said: “If anyone is thinking of taking any chances, just take a look at me. I’m in the intensive care unit. I can’t breathe without this. They’ve had to sew that into my artery. I’ve got a cannula, another cannula and a catheter.”

As well as supportive messages, the family were flooded with people questioning the authenticity of the video, partly because Tara Jane did not make specific reference to coronavirus. The messages came from as far away as the Philippines. Langston said: “My daughter was getting upset as were Jane’s sister and friends. People having arguments on Twitter saying it’s not real and it’s fake. I was getting messages from people telling me to prove it.”

Keatley shrugged at the messages accusing her sister of lying. “Everyone’s going to have an opinion or conspiracy theory,” she said.

But the response eventually drove Tara Jane to create a second video to show she was telling the truth.

Langston is glad he packed his wife’s phone when the ambulance arrived to take her to hospital. “She otherwise wouldn’t have had any communication with us. I spoke to her today and she is doing a lot better,” Langston said. “She hasn’t had any visitors and she has done this all by herself.”

He aid he was incredibly proud of his wife and believes a lot of good will come from her sharing a video of her coronavirus experience. “A lot of people going about their business and not thinking there are consequences have got in touch to say the video has changed their mind.”