A beloved Brooklyn schoolteacher died from complications of COVID-19 after she was initially denied coronavirus tests, her family said.
Bushwick Ascend Middle School hailed Rana “Zoe” Mungin, 30, as a “one-of-a-kind educator” who had a “transformational impact on her students and colleagues,” according to a campus statement issued Tuesday.
She died Monday from the pandemic that has ravaged the world and brutalized New York City.
“It’s just a tough one to swallow right now,” her sister and housemate, Mia Mungin, a nurse, told NBC News on Wednesday. “I really thought she was coming back home. She was doing so much better.”
The family believed that Mungin had been improving in recent weeks before she took a sudden turn for the worse.
“It was so crazy. I got to see her on Friday. We FaceTimed, and despite everything, she looked well,” Mia Mungin said. “But the next day we FaceTimed her, it was like a different person. She was like a deer in headlights. You could just tell.
“We FaceTimed on Sunday. That’s when I broke down,” Mia Mungin continued. “She was tired. You know, it is only so long the body could take a beating.
“The next day she was gone.”
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The veteran nurse said she’s bitter, feeling let down by the industry she has worked in for two decades.
“I just feel like the health care system failed her on so many levels,” Mia Mungin said. “The health care system failed us, something