[BP 7.1.5] : CURL encoding change/regression in 7.1

This is a very simplified version of code that I am using within our Customer 360 function to retrieve data from Jira. The code below works in 6.6 but fails with a 404 in 7.1. As far as I can tell so far, the issue has to do with how the curl command is encoding (or not?) some of the characters such as '+' and possibly '=':

function OnUpdate(doc, meta) {

    const path ="search?jql=project+=+MB+AND+type+=+Improvement"

    const response = curl('GET', url_jira, {path:path+'&startAt=' + '0' + '&maxResults=' + '1000'});

    log(response)

}

The url_jira binding points to 'https://issues.couchbase.com/rest/api/latest/' and the above path is accessible without any authentication.