CP and COVID-19: Most notably, in the CP group, majority of the ASVs which demonstrated a downtrend during the course of the pandemic represented opportunistic pathogens like Veillonella parvula, Rothia mucilaginosa, Streptococcus anginosus, Acinetobacter baumannii, etc. Since, previous studies have reported an increase in the abundance of opportunistic pathogens in the microbiota of COVID-19 patients compared to healthy individuals (Hoque et al., 2021; Shi et al., 2022); this observation might seem counter intuitive.