Lin-Manuel Miranda to Miss Oscars After Wife Tests Positive for Virus

Lin-Manuel Miranda won’t be attending the Oscars on Sunday, he said on Twitter on Saturday, out of an abundance of caution after his wife tested positive for the coronavirus this weekend. He added that she was “doing fine,” and said that he had tested negative.

Mr. Miranda is up for the best original song Academy Award for the song, “Dos Oruguitas” from the Disney musical “Encanto.” It is the first song he’s written from “beginning to end in Spanish,” he told Vulture magazine in January.

Besides his colleagues in “Encanto,” Mr. Miranda says he will also be cheering on the cast and crew of the movie “Tick, Tick … Boom!,” which was Mr. Miranda’s directorial debut. It has received two Oscar nominations — one for Andrew Garfield in the best actor category and one for best film editing.

The last time Mr. Miranda, who created the Broadway musical “Hamilton,” was a nominee at the Oscars was in 2017 for the song, “How Far I’ll Go” from “Moana.” If he wins on Sunday, Mr. Miranda would join the small number of Hollywood heavyweights who have EGOT status — those who have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony — which includes Rita Moreno, Audrey Hepburn, Whoopi Goldberg and John Legend.

After last year’s socially distanced Oscars with separated seating areas, movie lovers were hoping for a return to normalcy with this year’s ceremony, back at its longtime home at the Dolby Theatre. (Last year’s show took place at Union Station in Los Angeles with less fanfare.) On Friday, the Academy updated its Covid policies, saying in a news release that “those who tested positive for Covid-19 and are within a zero to five-day window from the date of their first positive test are not permitted to attend under any circumstances.”