State health care officials are watching changes in the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations carefully, and have decided it might be time to prepare for another challenge to the hospitals and health care systems that haven’t quite caught their breath from the last round.

On Aug. 22, the West Virginia Joint Interagency Task Force for COVID-19 vaccines will hold a tabletop exercise to look at options for supporting those hospitals and health care systems if the numbers do, indeed, keep climbing.

Staffing shortages and supply chain issues mean the “benchmark of concern” is 500 COVID-19 hospitalizations statewide. We are around 400 at the moment.

“We can insulate ourselves and go higher than that, but at 500 it starts to get uncomfortable,” Gov. Jim Justice told WVNews on Tuesday.

“The hospitals currently are not having capacity limitations just because of COVID,” state COVID-19 czar Dr. Clay Marsh told WVNews. “Many hospitals have big backlogs of surgeries and medical care that people put off during the pandemic surges that we’ve seen previously. So the hospitals are very full — both with patients with COVID, but also with people without (COVID).”

The time for planning is now, and it is encouraging to know state officials are working to get ahead of the game. In the meantime, each of us can do his or her part in preventing a significant increase in those numbers by getting vaccinated or boosted, staying home and testing if we feel ill, and using common sense practices for stemming the spread of the virus.

If health officials feel the need to shore up their efforts, so should we.