These include mainland Portugal and Madeira, the Canary Islands, five Greek islands and Malta, among others.

The government is expected to categorise countries under a new traffic light system in the coming days, which will set out what testing and quarantine rules travellers will be subject to when returning from "green", "amber" and "red" list destinations.

So are these updates the first indications of a "green list" taking shape? Or is this simply the FCDO doing its job, as it always has, based on the latest assessments of Covid risk?

Given the timing, with the government continuing to stress it will set out how countries are categorised under the traffic light system "by early May", it is inviting to believe the former, particularly given the nature of the destinations – Portugal, the Canaries, Greece’s islands and Malta scream "leisure".

And it would mirror the FCDO’s stance when it came to last summer’s stop-start travel corridor regime, where there was an island policy making a clear distinction between the likes of Madeira and the Canaries to each destination’s respective mainland.

But it remains unclear at this stage whether these green, amber and red lists will align with FCDO advice.

Neither the FCDO nor the Department for Transport would be drawn on alignment when approached by TTG last week.

The Times last month reported an FCDO source as saying its advice would continue to be independent.

A DfT spokesperson, when asked if the government’s traffic light announcement would be made in conjunction with the FCDO, told TTG that all decisions were being made through the government’s central Covid operations (Covid-O) committee, which also features FCDO representation.

The FCDO, though, has continued to update its travel advice with regards to Covid-19 in the background amid the clamour over the report of the government’s Global Travel Taskforce.

On April 16, the FCDO lifted its advice against all but essential travel to mainland Portugal and Madeira, although it continues to advise against travel to the Azores "based on the current assessment of Covid-19 risks".

While the FCDO continues to advise against travel to most other European countries and destinations owing to this same assessment of Covid risks, it highlights the FCDO will – like last summer – issue travel advice with exceptions for islands, or with region-specific advice.

It has, in recent weeks, softened its advice to no longer advise against all but essential travel to the Canary Islands, as well as the Greek islands of Rhodes, Kos, Zakynthos, Corfu and Crete.

It also lifted its advice against all but essential travel to Malta on Friday (30 April), as well as Israel, Denmark (including the Faroe Islands and Greenland) and Russia. Malta has said it will reopen to vaccinated Brits from 1 June.

Other countries and territories where the FCDO is not currently advising against all but essential travel include Gibraltar, Finland, Iceland and Norway.

Travel has for weeks been crying out for the green, amber and red lists to be published promptly; the House of Commons’ transport committee even gave the government a 1 May deadline to do so, claiming the delay and the subsequent uncertainty, would – undoubtedly – start to cost people jobs. It missed this deadline at the weekend.

Some degree of alignment between the FCDO advice and the government’s traffic light system will be essential if travel is to resume – properly – this summer, especially if insurers continue to base the validity of their policies on the FCDO’s advice.

But, as Advantage Travel Partnership chief Julia Lo Bue-Said noted last month, there are many more stars – testing, insurance, flexible booking policies and destination-specific Covid policies – that yet need to align for travel to take-off again.

James Chapple is TTG’s deputy news editor.