A spongy swab (16) is mounted against the distal face (15) of a piston (14) at the end of a push-rod (12). Once humected with a sample fluid, the swab and piston assembly is inserted into a tubular body (30) like the plunger of a syringe. As the swab is pushed and squeezed against the distal end (20) of the body up to a trippable stop, part of the fluid is excreted into a chromatographic immunoassay testing device (21) through a first aperture (19) in a distal section of the body. The remainder of the sample is kept in a sealed chamber (7) between the piston and the end wall of the tubular body until it is excreted through a second aperture (23) for a secondary test by pushing the piston beyond the trippable stop. That preserves the sample within the spongy swab that has been used to collect it thus preventing the adsorption of the analytes on the surfaces of the sealed chamber, and to provide a convenient and rapid way to extract the remainder of the specimen in a syringe-like manner.
