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Some 40 students were watching Paula De Simone’s online course on 20th century history when she stopped interacting at some point.
When they realized the teacher was in danger and was having trouble breathing, they asked for her address to call an ambulance, but she did not respond, student Ana Breccia told the Washington Post.
Breccia, 23, said that at one point, it appeared De Simone was contacting her husband and the students stayed with her until he got home.
Paola De Simone, 46, who taught at the University of Buenos Aires, died Wednesday shortly after collapsing during the online course, according to Clarín, Argentina’s largest newspaper. The teacher, whose Twitter account has since been deleted, posted on the social network last week a message saying that she has symptoms of coronavirus that have persisted for weeks.
The teacher’s students and classmates said that it was not a surprise for them when Paola decided to give lessons and after she fell ill. Silvina Sterin Pensel, an Argentine journalist from New York and an old friend of Paula’s, confessed that he told her in a conversation that she could give lessons and that “my students need me”.
She called De Simone’s death a “sad reminder that the virus is real.”
Argentina has reported more than 450,000 cases of coronavirus infection and more than 9,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University, and is one of the most affected countries in Latin America.
