Dispensed Daily: Developing a coronavirus drug based on patients' blood — COVID-19's effects on the nervous system — Economic assistance programs are ending

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Welcome to Dispensed Daily, your daily dose of healthcare news from Business Insider.

If we haven't met yet, my name's Lydia Ramsey Pflanzer, and I'm a healthcare editor here at Business Insider. I typically write our weekly healthcare newsletter, Dispensed.

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A plasma-derived treatment for COVID-19

Over the weekend, Andrew Dunn reports on the the attempts to make a plasma-derived coronavirus treatment.

By now you've probably heard about the use of convalescent plasma in hospitalized COVID-19 patients, which uses part of the donated blood of recovered COVID-19 patients with the hopes of boosting the immune system's response in people actively fighting off the virus.

Well 10 drugmakers, including Japanese pharma giant Takeda, are looking at a way to standardize that process, making a plasma-based therapy that could come in handy as we face the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic later this year.

You can read the full story here:

10 drugmakers are working together to develop a treatment based on the blood of COVID-19 survivors, and they plan to start testing in humans next month

Many coronavirus patients suffer dizziness, delirium, and difficulty concentrating because COVID-19 targets the entire nervous system

• In a new review of research, doctors found that nearly half of hospitalized COVID-19 patients experience neurological symptoms including dizziness, a loss of smell and taste, and difficulty concentrating.
• The study authors say these symptoms may appear before the more telltale coronavirus signs, like fever and difficulty breathing.
• Other experts and survivors have detailed worrying short- and long-term cognitive symptoms that the findings help to frame.

12 weeks ago Congress rushed in to save the US from economic collapse. But now all its assistance programs are ending.

• The federal assistance programs that tided over jobless workers and struggling businesses early on in the pandemic are set to expire this summer.
• Congress is barreling towards the July deadline, setting up a cliff that could lead to critical aid being yanked from struggling people.
• "What really concerns me is people relying on the somewhat rosy jobs picture," labor expert Michelle Evermore says. "That was the kind of thing that pushed the Great Depression into a double-dip, easing stimulus too soon."

More stories we're reading:

• How investors — not doctors — are profiting from marked up emergency room bills (ProPublica)
• 'This is clearly about race, this is not about class': Biotech CEOs get personal about what it's like to be a Black leader in their industry and in America (Business Insider)
• The Trump administration on Friday rolled back LGBTQ patient protections (Politico)
• We just got our first look at how healthcare startups like Oscar and Clover fared as the coronavirus pandemic hit the US (Business Insider)