TULIPS Will Increase Production to 5 Million Swabs a Week to Boost Covid 19 Diagnosis in India

Amid calls for increased coronavirus testing nationwide, Suparshva Swabs (TULIPS), India’s leading personal hygiene consumer product innovator and owner of the fast-growing popular brand TULIPS, today, announced that it is currently producing over 2 million COVID-19 SWABS per week, which would increase to over 5 million per week by the end of May 2020, to accelerate COVID-19 testing.

To meet the national need for COVID-19 tests, the company is ramping up production, by converting its production lines and reconfiguring equipment, of some of its manufacturing capabilities. The company has the largest installed capacity of Cotton buds in Asia & possesses capability of taking the COVID-19 swab production to over 30 million swabs per week, if required in due course.

The intent is to make the country self-reliant in nasal and throat swabs, a critical component in fighting COVID-19 war and rely less on supplies from other countries, in these testing times. With rising number of COVID-19 cases, the company shifted focus to affordable swabs, as domestically produced swabs would cost one-tenth the imported throat swabs.

Key features of the highly specialized TULIPS swabs are:
• 100% polyester based swab on a thinner Polypropylene Shaft
• ICMR approved polyester swab with very flexible stem
• In-built break point at 64 mm and a red indicator line just above it thereby posing no risk for the test medics
• Special thin size swab size – perfectly comfortable for both nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal
• Swab compatible even for vacutainer tubes with a bung cap
• 4 tier quality check system – guaranteed product as per COA

TULIPS novel polyester spun swabs innovation has excellent collection and release properties. Polyester fiber has been tested and validated for use in specimen collection in microbiology, RT-PCR analysis.

TULIPS is the first to develop & receive the ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) and NIV (National Institute of Virology) validation for domestically produced ‘polyester’ swabs. This is significant as COVID Test swabs were not manufactured in India, and were imported from the US or China. With global demand increasing, it became difficult and expensive to get swabs from other nations.

Today the country needs the swabs in large numbers to fight the COVID-19 war. As per WHO, reconfiguring health systems is vital to tackling COVID-19. This is significant amid calls for more testing for coronavirus and warnings from the medical experts that reopening the nation’s economy without increasing the capacity to test for the virus poses serious risks.

"Today's health crisis is unprecedented, so we all have to help wherever we can. While we are firm on meeting the national needs, we will also scale up and help others across the world.

We are convinced that widespread testing of those currently infected with COVID-19 will bring us out of the current lockdown as we do our bit to help the country return to normalcy. We are working at full speed as time is of the essence, and a lot is at stake. Our dedicated employees are working 24 x 7, to ensure free availability.  We developed Polyester swabs for COVID testing by converting the 100% Cotton processing lines, to produce Polyester swabs, within 10 days flat. What is unique here, is that the entire development was done in-house by our amazing team and the trials were done on main production lines, which enabled us to start producing the same day we received the ICMR approval,” said Rahul Jain, Partner, Suparshava Swabs.

“To fight COVID-19, India will have to increase testing and may need over 7 – 10 million swabs every week, to enable the nation to safely begin easing lockdown restrictions and open the economy. This is significant as India plans aggressively to test its billion plus population for COVID-19 to ensure the virus doesn't spread faster when some of the regulations are relaxed.”, said Mr Rajiv Nath, Forum Coordinator, Association of Indian Medical Device Industry (AiMeD), New Delhi ”

With COVID-19 positive cases in India crossing 100000 and deaths surpassing 3000, experts believe, we must act decisively to outsmart the virus and contain the outbreak. Affordable swabs enable mitigating this human crisis by accelerating preventive testing, and quickly meeting the massive demand to a decrease in outbreak as well as a return to normalcy.

One of the largest producers of swabs – TULIPS’ product line, currently one of the best worldwide in innovative hygiene cotton products and wipes, employs more than 400 workers.

About Suparshva Swabs (I)

Incorporated in 1998, Suparshva Swabs (I) is the one of the largest & the most qualitative manufacturer/ exporter of Personal Hygiene products, like Cotton buds, Special Swabs, Cotton balls etc., in entire South Asia.

Strongest Indian company selling various cotton & wood based personal hygiene products under their flagship brand TULIPS, their product range includes almost all Cotton hygiene products including Cotton Buds, Cotton Pads, Cotton Balls,  range of refreshing wipes and baby wipes, Absorbent Cotton Rolls & Cotton Pleats, high quality White Birch Toothpicks, Skewers / Bar-be-que sticks of different sizes.

Suparshva Swabs (I) is a company with international reputation and footprint and the products are produced at state of the art manufacturing facilities, ensuring high level of quality standards & product consistency.

Their product quality has earned international prestige for the country, as the products are being exported to top brands in more than 15, quality-discerning, countries. With complete backward integration, almost all the intermediate raw materials used are being processed on totally automated production lines, making the company one of the lowest cost manufacturers in the world.