No children or animals were harmed in the novichok attack in Wiltshire last year, health officials have said, following claims that Donald Trump decided to take action against Russia after being shown images of dead ducks and children in hospital.

Trump is said to have been reluctant at first to expel Russian diplomats following the attack in Salisbury last year, viewing the poisoning of the former Moscow agent Sergei Skripal as “part of legitimate spy games”.

Trump changed his mind after the then deputy CIA director, Gina Haspel, showed him pictures of young children who apparently had been hospitalised as a result of the Salisbury attack, according to the New York Times. She also showed him photographs of ducks that had been killed purportedly because of carelessness in handling the nerve agent on the part of the two Russian intelligence operatives alleged to have carried out the attack.

“Mr Trump fixated on the pictures of the sickened children and the dead ducks,” the report said. At the end of the briefing, Trump embraced what Haspel had presented as the “strong option” and expelled 60 diplomats.

But the report does not chime with what the UK authorities have said about the impact of the novichok attack. Three adults were poisoned the attack in Salisbury in March last year: Skripal, his daughter Yulia, and the police officer Nick Bailey. Two others, Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley, were poisoned in Amesbury, eight miles (13km) north of Salisbury, in June, with Sturgess later dying. No children are known to have been harmed in either incident.

The fate of ducks on the river close to where the Skripals collapsed has been a source of speculation. It is believed some tests were carried out on dead ducks but they were not found to have been poisoned by novichok.

Asked by the Guardian to comment on the New York Times report, Tracy Daszkiewicz, the director of public health at Wiltshire council, said: “There were no other casualties other than those previously stated. No wildlife were impacted by the incident and no children were exposed to or became ill as a result of either incident.”

Salisbury district hospital said no children were admitted as a result of being exposed to novichok. However, some children were taken to hospital by parents worried they may have been poisoned, or with anxiety.