- Rana Zoe Mungin, a 30-year-old teacher in
Brooklyn , New York, died of thecoronavirus on Monday after being on a ventilator for more than a month. - Mungin's sister Mia told local outlets that she was twice sent home from the hospital without being tested for COVID-19, even though she was struggling to breathe.
- During one trip to the hospital, Mia says a paramedic insinuated that Zoe was just "having a panic attack."
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A 30-year-old Brooklyn teacher died of the coronavirus on Monday after being twice sent home from the hospital without being tested.
Rana Zoe Mungin, a social studies teacher at Ascend Academy in East New York, died at Select Specialty Hospital in New Jersey, where she was recently transferred after stays at Brookdale Hospital and Mount Sinai.
Zoe came down with a fever on March 12, and is believed to have caught it from her sister Mia, a nurse who lives with her in their family home in Brooklyn.
—Heather Long (@byHeatherLong) April 27, 2020
She had two underlying conditions — hypertension and asthma — which have been known to lead to coronavirus complications.
But Mia said her sister's symptoms weren't taken seriously the first two times she went to the hospital to try and get tested.
According to Essence, Zoe first went to the hospital on March 15, where she was given albuterol to treat her asthma, and headache medication before being sent home.
When Zoe continued to experience shortness of breath three days later, her sister called an ambulance again.
But the EMTs who helped transport her to the hospital were "insinuating she was having a panic attack, saying her lungs were clear," Mia told PIX 11. Yet again, she was sent home from the hospital without being tested.
—mia mungin (@MiaMungin) April 27, 2020
Ventilators, hydroxychloroquine , and almost getting a clinical trial
Zoe was finally admitted to Brookdale Hospital on her third visit, March 20, at which point she was immediately intubated and hooked up to a ventilator. (Tragically, this was the same hospital where an older sister died of an asthma attack 15 years earlier, according to ABC News.)
At the hospital, Zoe was treated wth the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, but it was not successful. This is the same drug President Donald Trump has touted in previous weeks, despite a lack of evidence proving it can treat the coronavirus.
The Mungin family suffered another disappointment when doctors said she could be a candidate for the clinical trial of the coronavirus drug remdesivir, but later said she wasn't eligible.
However, Gilead did help Zoe get transferred to Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, where she started to show signs of improvement.
—Wellesley Leftist Student Union (@WellesleyWLSU) April 28, 2020
On April 18, Zoe woke up and started to move her eyes. Doctors were hopeful she was on the mend, so they transferred her to Select Specialty Hospital in New Jersey on April 23, a facility that helps patients come off ventilators.
But Mia said her sister's condition started to worsen almost as soon as she arrived at the new hospital. She last spoke to Zoe over FaceTime on Sunday, April 26.
"I told her I loved her, and I needed her to keep fighting. But I know she's tired and her body is worn," Mia recalled to PIX 11.
"I apologized that she was there. I didn't consciously bring [coronavirus] into the house, but it's something I was exposed to. If I could trade places with her, I would," Mia added.
Zoe died the next day — April 27 — shortly after noon.
Zoe was the valedictorian of her graduating high school class at Public School 202 in East New York.
She was a first-generation college student, getting her BA in Psychology from Wellesley College and later an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
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