Continuing his bout on the PM Narendra Modi led government over its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said that the central government is refusing to fight the furious pandemic.

Even as India witnessed a spike of over 18,000 fresh cases of novel coronavirus and total cases crossing five lakh mark, former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi on Saturday took a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his silence, saying he has surrendered and is refusing to fight the pandemic.

"Covid-19 is spreading rapidly into new parts of the country. Government of India has no plan to defeat it. Prime Minister is silent. He has surrendered and is refusing to fight the pandemic," Rahul Gandhi said in a tweet attaching a news report highlighting that the government has become less visible. His remarks came after India witnessed the highest single-day spike of COVID-19 cases adding over 18,000 patients in just 24 hours taking the tally to over half a million cases.

Rahul Gandhi has targeted the government in almost daily posts over its handling of the contagion crisis. In one of the posts, he had quoted Einstein to say, "The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance". He has been attacking the Centre ever since a countrywide lockdown was announced in March to curtail the chain of transmission.

Meanwhile, a total of 18,552 new cases took the tally up to 5,08,953 as India continued to be the fourth worst-hit among 213 countries. Now, it is only a lakh case away from Russia, which is in the third spot behind the US and Brazil. According to the health ministry data, 384 new deaths were reported in the last 24 hours taking the death toll to 15,685 in the country.

(With inputs from IANS)