Figure 5.

Oropharyngeal microbial diversity among CCs, SCs, and Hs. A) Levels of antibodies against SARS‐CoV‐2 in CCs (n = 21), SCs (n = 36), and Hs (n = 6) after recovery. The positive judgment value was 10 U mL⁻¹ in the kit (>10 U mL⁻¹ was positive, and <10 U mL⁻¹ was negative). The antibody levels in the figure were computed as log₂(value). B) Rarefaction analysis displayed that as the number of samples increased, the number of OTUs approached stable in CCs (n = 73), SCs (n = 36) and Hs (n = 140). Compared with the Hs, the number of OTUs was reduced in CCs and SCs. C) As evaluated by the Shannon index, the oropharyngeal microbial diversity of CCs and SCs was lower than that of Hs (all p < 0.001). D) A Venn diagram revealed that 593 of 1109 OTUs were shared in the CC, SC, and H groups, while 254 OTUs were unique to Hs. The PCoA E) and NMDS F) exhibited that the oropharyngeal microbial communities in the CCs and SCs were similar but significantly different from those in the Hs. CCs, confirmed cases; SCs, suspected cases; Hs, healthy controls; SARS‐CoV‐2, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; OTUs, operational taxonomic units; PCoA, principal coordinate analysis; NMDS, nonmetric multidimensional scaling; centerline, median; box limits, upper and lower quartiles; error bars, 95% CI.