Prominent Journalists in Greece’s make up part of record-high death toll of 130

Two of Greece’s best-known journalists — a respected arts writer and translator, and a controversial radio host — were among the country’s new Covid-19 death toll high of 130 announced Tuesday.

Rosita Sokou, 98, was one of the first female journalists in Greece and was widely esteemed as a pioneer.

During a career spanning over six decades, she befriended legendary Russian dancer and choreographer Rudolf Nureyev, co-hosted a popular tv talent show and translated Isaac Asimov, Aldous Huxley and Mary Shelley, screenplays by Ingmar Bergman and Hugo Pratt’s Corto Maltese comics.

Giorgos Tragas, who also died Tuesday aged 72, was one of the country’s best-known and most divisive talk show hosts, who frequently invited controversy with over-the-top remarks.

A vociferous critic of Greece’s post-2010 crisis bailouts, Tragas in 2012 was fined by the country’s TV watchdog for insulting Germany’s then-chancellor Angela Merkel.

In 2013, he was criticised again for interviewing four senior members of neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, who were later convicted as members of a criminal organisation.

Tragas, who was also a tabloid publisher and in February formed a self-styled patriotic party, had called the coronavirus “a massive orchestrated fraud”.

State public health watchdog Eody on Tuesday said the latest Covid-19 figures had pushed the overall death toll to nearly 19,500 since the start of the pandemic, with over a million cases.