WordPress / WooCommerce update statement blocks entire MariaDB database on WP Multisite setup

Question

I have a wordpress/woocommerce stack with a couple of plugins activated, once or twice a day MariaDB database (AWS RDS MariaDB 10.6) hangs and becomes completely unreachable to the point where I need to reboot the instance.

The error log shows too many connections errors and the connections indeed reach their max_connections value. I set up slow query logging to examine what happens when this occurs.

When the problem occured again, indeed the slow query log got written to the point where the RDS instance hanged again and needed a reboot.

It seems to be an update statement :

https://aws.amazon.com/rds/). started with:
Tcp port: 3306 Unix socket: /tmp/mysql.sock
Time Id Command Argument
# Time: 221108 14:00:54
# User@Host: wordpress[wordpress] @ [10.0.0.191]
# Thread_id: 151359 Schema: wp_multisite_002 QC_hit: No
# Query_time: 50.027958 Lock_time: 0.050058 Rows_sent: 0 Rows_examined: 0
# Rows_affected: 0 Bytes_sent: 67
use wp_multisite_002;
SET timestamp=1667916054;
UPDATE `wp_2_options` SET `option_value` = '1668002404' WHERE `option_name` = '_transient_timeout_et_core_path';
# User@Host: wordpress[wordpress] @ [10.0.0.191]
# Thread_id: 151362 Schema: wp_multisite_002 QC_hit: No
# Query_time: 50.053338 Lock_time: 0.050050 Rows_sent: 0 Rows_examined: 0
# Rows_affected: 0 Bytes_sent: 67
SET timestamp=1667916054;
UPDATE `wp_2_options` SET `option_value` = '1668002404' WHERE `option_name` = '_transient_timeout_et_core_path';
# Time: 221108 14:00:55
# User@Host: wordpress[wordpress] @ [10.0.0.191]
# Thread_id: 151364 Schema: wp_multisite_002 QC_hit: No
# Query_time: 50.047369 Lock_time: 0.050090 Rows_sent: 0 Rows_examined: 0
# Rows_affected: 0 Bytes_sent: 67
SET timestamp=1667916055;
UPDATE `wp_2_options` SET `option_value` = '1668002405' WHERE `option_name` = '_transient_timeout_et_core_path';
# Time: 221108 14:00:58
# User@Host: wordpress[wordpress] @ [10.0.0.191]
# Thread_id: 151371 Schema: wp_multisite_002 QC_hit: No
# Query_time: 50.001565 Lock_time: 0.050071 Rows_sent: 0 Rows_examined: 0
# Rows_affected: 0 Bytes_sent: 67
SET timestamp=1667916058;

Is there anyone who knows what could cause this and what's the use of this statement , google search on _transient_timeout_et_core_path doesn't give me much information.

I can't replicate the problem because I don't know what's the reason it occurs. It does happen everyday, once or twice, also no excessive amounts of users , mostly 1 or 2 at the same time and I'm not even sure if anyone is actively using the site when it happens.

Thanks