Background: From the begging months of 2020 a severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2,also called 2019-nCoV) caused a devastating global outbreak.At present,the diagnosis of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVlD-19) is made through a nasopharyngeal swab based on reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) technique.However,some recent studies suggested the possible role of oral fluids and saliva in the detection of SARS-CoV-2.The purpose of this scoping review is evaluating the available evidence regarding the efficacy of saliva as a diagnostic specimen in COVID-19 patients.Methods: A systematic literature review of six databases (PubMed,Scopus,The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials[CENTRAL],Science Direct,Web of Science and Google scholar) was carried out without any restrictions on date of publication to identify the reliability of saliva as a diagnostic specimen for detection of SARS-CoV-2 in suspected patients.Results: Nine eligible articles were included in this review based on our described method.All the included studies are based on clinical surveys among patients with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection.Most of studies included in this review,reported that there is no statistically significant difference between nasopharyngeal or sputum specimens and saliva samples regarding viral load.Conclusions: Despite limitations of this study,the findings of this review suggest that the use of self-collected saliva as a non-invasive specimen has proper accuracy and reliability regarding detection of SARS-CoV-2 based on RT-PCR technique.