A 30-year-old Brooklyn teacher died of the coronavirus after being sent home from the ER twice and told she was just 'having a panic attack'

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• Rana Zoe Mungin, a 30-year-old teacher in Brooklyn, New York, died of the novel coronavirus on Monday after being on a ventilator for more than a month.

• Mungin's sister Mia told local outlets that Mungin 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, her sister has said, a paramedic insinuated that Mungin was just "having a panic attack."

• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

A 30-year-old Brooklyn teacher died of the novel coronavirus on Monday after being twice sent home from the hospital without being tested.

Rana Zoe Mungin, a social-studies teacher at Bushwick Ascend Middle School, died at Select Specialty Hospital in New Jersey, where she was recently transferred after stays at Brookdale Hospital and Mount Sinai.

She came down with a fever on March 12 and is believed to have caught the virus from her sister Mia, who is a nurse. The two lived in their family home in Brooklyn.

She had two conditions, hypertension and asthma, that US health officials have warned may lead to coronavirus complications.

But Mia Mungin said her sister's symptoms weren't taken seriously the first two times she went to the hospital to try to get tested.

According to Essence, Mungin first went to the hospital March 15, where she was given albuterol to treat her asthma as well as headache medication before being sent home.

When she continued to experience shortness of breath three days later, however, her sister called an ambulance again.

But the emergency responders who helped transport her to the hospital were "insinuating she was having a panic attack, saying her lungs were clear," her sister told PIX 11. Yet again, she was sent home from the hospital without being tested.

Ventilators, hydroxychloroquine, and almost getting a clinical trial

Mungin was finally admitted to Brookdale Hospital on her third visit, on 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, Mungin 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 a clinical trial of the coronavirus drug remdesivir — but later said she wasn't eligible.

Both Gilead, the pharmaceutical company that produced the drug, and Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York had petitioned to have Mungin take part in the trial but were unsuccessful, People reported.

Gilead did help Mungin get transferred to Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, however, where she started to show signs of improvement.

On April 18, Mungin 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 Mungin said her sister's condition started to worsen almost as soon as she arrived at the new hospital. She last spoke with her sister over FaceTime on Sunday.

"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 Mungin recalled to PIX 11.

"I apologized that she was there," she added. "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."

Mungin died the next day, Monday, shortly after noon.

She was a first-generation college student, getting her bachelor's in psychology from Wellesley College and later an MFA in creative writing from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Editor's note: A previous version of this story said Mungin worked at Ascend Academy. She worked at Bushwick Ascend Middle School.

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