I took a covid test because I had dinner with some people who later came down with covid, and when my symptoms were pretty severe, I took a test. It was like jamming a stick coated with ground glass up my nose! I could never figure out why, if the goal was to achieve mucus for testing purposes, why a swab would be so irritating! It should have been soft and absorbent if collection of a fluid was the goal! I did one nostril, but quit after starting the second nostril! I wish I had been thinking well enough at the time to have kept one of those swabs for analysis! (it was just one swab, with instructions to insert it into both nostrils; If thinking straight, I would have said, "Oh, sorry, I dropped the swab, please give me another" :) )