New insights into upper respiratory microbiota diversity and interplay in patients with COVID-19 depending on the SARS-CoV-2 viral load in the epithelial cells in the nasopharynx.

Our study provides important results to explore the linkage between nasopharynx microbiota and virus load in the epithelium cells. The arbitrarily designated division of research groups was reflected in the bacterial microbiota's diversified qualitative and semi-quantitative composition. Patients with low viral replication (group II) and patients who eliminated the SARS-CoV-2 virus from the epithelial cells (group III) formed a less biodiverse group in microbiota community.