The 12-year-old girl felt unwell after returning from a holiday to northern Italy with her parents and sister. They had all been in self-quarantine before she developed the symptoms, according to the Times of Malta.
"The children did not go to school and the parents did not go to work or leave the house. Their contact with other people was minimal", Fearne told reporters at a press conference.
The family has been put in quarantine at an infectious disease unit in a hospital in the coastal town of Msida. Maltese authorities do not plan any extra precautionary measures and will not stop flights from Italy, he added.
The number of confirmed coronavirus infections globally has surpassed 102,000, with almost 3,500 deaths, a vast majority of which were in China’s Hubei province where the virus originated. At the same time, more than 57,000 people have recovered.