NOVI — The need for field hospital beds to treat coronavirus patients may be waning.

The Suburban Collection Showplace in Novi, announced earlier this week as a second 1,000-bed field hospital to help with a surge of coronavirus patients at southeast Michigan hospitals, is scaling back to an initial build-out of 250 beds that will be ready to begin accepting patients on April 20.

"It's basically a scaled down version of what we did at TCF," said Nick Zager, chief of alternate health care projects for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Detroit district. "We're just looking at 250 here at the direction of the state. As things have been changing, our mission currently is 250."

The crews can add more beds if necessary, Zager said, because the facility has the capacity for housing up to 1,100 beds.

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Michelle Grinnell, spokeswoman for the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, said the state is trying to take a thoughtful approach to field hospitals.

"Based on where things currently stand with the hospital surge in Southeast Michigan and additional bed capacity coming online, we are starting with 250 beds ...at Suburban Collection Showplace, with the ability to ramp up," she said. "It is always easier to ramp up capacity as needed than it is to build out that maximum capacity from day one."

The reduction follows an announcement by the University of Michigan on Friday that Michigan Medicine was putting on hold plans to convert an indoor track to a 500-bed field hospital.

"Michigan Medicine continues to plan for potential need, but we have no definite date on which the field hospital would open at this time," said Mary Masson, spokeswoman for Michigan Medicine. "It appears from current COVID-19 cases and modeling that the curve is significantly flattening."

The Ann Arbor hospital has not reached capacity and has been accepting COVID-19 patients from other hospitals in southeast Michigan. The 219 coronavirus patients at Michigan Medicine has been relatively flat since April 5.

The scaled back plans come as the state surpassed 23,000 people who had tested positive for coronavirus as of Saturday afternoon and nearly 1,400 deaths. Health professionals are seeing some signs that the infection may be nearing its peak in Michigan. Doctors at Henry Ford Health System are now discharging more patients to recover at home than seeing new admissions in the emergency room. State health officials have said they expect coronavirus to peak by the end of April or early May.

Other than the number of beds, the field hospital in Novi looks remarkably similar to the field hospital at TCF Center, which was transformed from Michigan's biggest convention center to a 1,000-bed field hospital that was ready to begin accepting patients on Friday.

Like the TCF Regional Health Care Center, the Novi field hospital will only admit coronavirus patients who are still ill enough to be hospitalized, but not sick enough to be on a ventilator. Those patients will remain in the hospital.

It took roughly 11 days from the beginning of work at TCF to being patient ready. And while TCF was prepared to accept 25 patients on both Friday and Saturday, ramping up to 250 by the end of next week, none were admitted Friday. Instead, only empty ambulances did practice runs at a staging area at loading bays at the back of the convention center.The first patient was admitted to the Detroit field hospital on Saturday.

At Suburban, rows of hospital cubbies made of metal frames and plastic board, similar to what an empty booth at a trade show looks like, were complete with curtains on each room to provide a bit of privacy for any patient who might end up there. Copper wiring was suspended from the ceiling so that oxygen can be piped into each room and metal grates were hung so that lights can be attached for each room.

Members of the Michigan National Guard had already assembled the hospital beds that will be rolled into each room, along with a personal care package placed on each bed that included a roll of toilet paper, toothbrush, soap and a small curved basin that can hold hospital instruments.

The work at Suburban is being done by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Gilbane, a Providence, Rhode Island, construction company that also has offices in Detroit, is the general contractor on the project. Once the project is complete, Ascension, a health care system formerly known as St. John Providence Health System, will run the Novi field hospital.

At the Javits Center in New York, which the U.S. Department of Defense converted from a convention center to a 1,000-bed field hospital, only 270 patients were being treated at the facility as of Friday night.

How to work, volunteer at field hospitals

For those looking to apply for work at one of the alternate care facilities, there are two options:

Those looking to volunteer for shorter periods of time can go to: http://www.michigan.gov/fightcovid19

Health care professionals looking for longer-term, paid positions can go to: https://form.jotform.com/200947011547047

Contact Kathleen Gray: 313-223-4430, kgray99@freepress.com or on Twitter @michpoligal.