A college professor in Argentina died last week from the novel coronavirus after collapsing in front of her students during a virtual class.
Paola De Simone, 46, taught at the Argentine University of Enterprise in Buenos Aires and was a “passionate and dedicated teacher,” according to a translated statement from the university.
In the statement posted to Twitter, the Argentine University of Enterprise expressed “deep sorrow” about the loss of De Simone, who taught in the department of government and international affairs for 15 years.
About 40 students were watching De Simone’s virtual lecture on Sept. 2 when they noticed she was in distress and struggling to breathe, one of the students told The Washington Post. They asked for her address to call an ambulance but she could not respond.
Finally, she seemed to contact her husband and the students remained on the video call until he arrived, the student said. Clarín, Argentina’s largest newspaper, reported that she died shortly after the collapse.
De Simone had previously posted on Twitter that her coronavirus symptoms had persisted for weeks, according to The Washington Post.
Silvina Sterin Pensel, an Argentine journalist who met De Simone when they were college classmates in 1992, told The Post that she was not surprised her friend kept working while sick with the virus, calling her “brainy” and “brilliant.”
“This was not a surprise, I totally portray Paola deciding, ‘I can totally do this, my students need me,’ ” she said, adding that her death is a “sad reminder that the virus is real.”
Argentina has seen a steady rise in new coronavirus cases and deaths in recent months. In August, Reuters reported that the South American country had posted a record number of new coronavirus cases — a daily rise of 10,550 cases — just one week after first exceeding 300,000 total cases.
“The virus is still making rounds in Buenos Aires,” Sterin Pensel said. “In Argentina, the confinement has been very strict, so people are showing signs of fatigue in complying. But these kinds of reminders, these awful reminders, they shake your core.”
One of De Simone’s former students, Michelle Denise Bolo, told The Washington Post she was “heartbroken” after learning that she had died. She described the professor’s courses as being engaging — even first thing in the morning.
“Her classes were at 7 a.m., it was very difficult sometimes, we were sleepy, but it was crazy because everybody listened to her,” Bolo, who also shared a photo of the professor teaching on Twitter, said. “By the end of the class, nobody wanted to leave, everybody wanted to keep talking about what she was explaining.”
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