It sounds a lot to me like they’re looking at the test swabs AFTER they have been tested.
They’re just Q-tips. Replaceable by ordinary q-tips if one is that paranoid.
They are not ordinary Q-tips. The cotton swab (which looks like it is 10" long long so as to probe the deepest recesses of your nasal chamber) comes in a test tube package to which it will be returned before sending it off for analysis.
The cotton swab cannot be replaced by an ordinary Q-tip.
How you ever had a Covid-19 test?