Global Swab and Viral Transport Medium Market to Reach USD 2.2 Billion by 2030 on Back of COVID-19 Pandemic

The global swab and viral transport medium (VTM) market was valued at USD 0.9 billion in 2019 and will witness a moderate growth rate of ~3% from 2020 to 2030 to reach USD 2.2 billion by 2030, driven by the onslaught of COVID-19 and increasing R&D activities.

These are the latest findings of Transparency Market Research (Albany NY, USA), a next-generation market intelligence provider.


The demand for swab and VTM has increased during the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. Since research institutes and labs have intensified their experiments for developing COVID-19 vaccines, companies in the swab and VTM market have increased their production capacities to develop products useful for viral collection, maintenance, and culture.

In terms of product, the transport medium segment accounted for a major share of the global swab and VTM market in 2019. The segment is anticipated to record a high CAGR during the forecast period, owing to rise in the need and demand for detection and prevention of the infectious diseases across the world. Geographically, North America accounted for a significant share of the global swab and VTM market in 2019. The presence of key players and growth strategies adopted by these players are the major factors driving the swab and VTM market in the region. The growth of the swab and VTM market in North America can also be attributed to rise in prevalence of infectious diseases. On the other hand, the Asia Pacific market is likely to grow at a rapid pace during the forecast period.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an unprecedented need of diagnostic reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) testing. The ideal way for taking the specimen type is a nasopharyngeal (NP) swab, which can be easily transported to a molecular microbiology laboratory in VTM and the swabs for the further examinations. An increase in the demand for swabs and VTM owing to the COVID-19 pandemic is projected to drive the global swab and VTM market in the near future.

However, some factors are hampering the overall development of the global swab and VTM market, such as the increasing number of false negatives and re-infection of COVID-19 diagnosis. As such, healthcare professionals are facing issues to test performance and interpretation of COVID-19 testing, as the level of viral RNA in many cases is below the limit of detection. Hence, manufacturers in the swab and VTM market are following CDC guidelines to develop products that facilitate appropriate specimen collection.

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