Professor’s Death after Collapsing in Virtual Class is a ‘Sad Reminder that the Virus is Real,’ Friend Says

About 40 students were watching Paola De Simone’s virtual lecture about 20th century world history when she stopped interacting with the slides.

When they noticed the professor in distress and struggling to breathe, they asked for her address to call an ambulance, but she did not respond, Ana Breccia, who was participating in the virtual class at the time, told The Washington Post in a WhatsApp message on Friday.

Breccia, 23, said at one point, De Simone seemed to contact her husband, and students stayed with her on the call until her husband arrived.

The 46-year-old college professor, who taught at the Argentine University of Enterprise in Buenos Aires, died Wednesday, shortly after collapsing during the virtual class, according to Clarín, Argentina’s largest newspaper. The professor, whose Twitter account has since been deleted, had posted on Twitter last week that her coronavirus symptoms had persisted for weeks.

Current and former students, as well as one of De Simone’s college classmates, told The Post they were not surprised when they heard De Simone kept teaching after falling ill.

Silvina Sterin Pensel, an Argentine journalist in New York, said about her longtime friend: “This was not a surprise, I totally portray Paola deciding, ‘I can totally do this, my students need me.'"

She called De Simone’s death a “sad reminder that the virus is real.”